Three Colours I Know in This World

BLACK-WHITE MAGIC

While rituals disappeared from the life of modern people, they still re-emerge in the most unexpected places… the images of Kincső Bede are taken up by the airtight and dusty Securitate Gothic style. Exactly like the incubus grimacing on a young lady’s chest in the Swiss Romantic painter Henry Fuseli’s artwork entitled The Nightmare. Still, these recordings do not evoke the recent past of Central and Eastern Europe, nor our long-forgotten, sleep-paralysis-like senses of identity. Merely, we acknowledge this peculiarity of the atmosphere because whether we speak Romanian, Polish, Czech, German or Hungarian (etc.) in this region, we all recognise the well-known, almost identical feeling. Instead of nightmare-causing eccentricity, the images produced by Kincső represent the (socialist) ghosts of the Carpathian Basin with a Hrabal-like laxity. In time we could be anywhere between 1945 and 1989 – globalisation has been avoiding our lands ever since. The contemporary nature of the monochrome images is only demonstrated through the disengaging poses, which reveal the spectacular effects of fashion photography. We can’t even talk about costumes, as the inherited clothing fits the represented characters perfectly. Apart from Kincső and her models, everything indicates – in an unmistakeable way – that in the last decades not much sunlight could shine through the densely woven iron curtain. We find ourselves in a neglected, dark and humid house of a thriller. The past haunts us. However, the characters with a halo effect convey senses of fresh energies, the talisman placed on the tip of the tongue indicates the concept of Mana, light is reflected in the wrecks of a two Millenia Dacia and the endless tombstones’ row of seats. In fact, rituals re-emerge in unexpected places! The pictures are photo rituals – therapeutic, healing ceremonies and necromancies. They seek the ecstatic experience, they try to recall something from the abandoned traditions, they aim to dramatize the past, but also, they intend to break taboos, which have ossified over the previous decades. The burdensome dismissing and suppression of the recent past overstep the physical or intellectual causal connections. In these cases, we find ourselves in the need of new ceremonies.

© Endre Cserna, visual artist and art critic
Translated by Eszter Novák

Three Colours I Know in This World by Kincső Bede (RO-HU)

March 10 – May 15, 2021

part of the official program of the Budapest Photo Festival 2021

TOBE Gallery | Budapest, Hungary

• with the support of the National Cultural Fund of Hungary NKA

Pousse-Café at TOBE with Orsolya Török-Illyés

Press

• Kísértő múlt – Kritika, Takács Fábián / Kortárs Online
• Bede Kincső fotóin egy gót rémregény lapjai közé keveredünk, Kocsis Katica / Kultúra.hu
• Interjú Bede Kincsővel, Háver-Varga Marianna / Papageno – Klasszik Rádió
• Interjú Bede Kincsővel, Bence Bettina / Lahmacun Rádió
• “A képeim által sebezhetővé váltam” interjú Bede Kincsővel, Berényi Henriett / Designisso