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Time has no hands nor mouth

by Réka Bohus
May 25 - June 25, 2022

In her previous works (Konstruktum, What Remains) Réka Bohus focused on capturing her personal attachment to particular objects, through the process of introducing those objects, she has abstracted particular feelings. The inspiration for her current work came from her four and a half years old son, who perceives his environment in his own unique way. He is currently in a crucial stage of development (early childhood): this stage is crucial for the development of his personality. His self-knowledge is getting stronger, he has his own will and small goals. Because of his lack of experience, he connects to everything on an emotional basis rather than on an intellectual one. To make sense of the unknown, he uses his own imagination. His eyesight is his most important sense of perception, he focuses on details that have an impact on his emotions. As a visual artist (and as a mother) Bohus aims to use photography as the medium to capture this phenomenon. With the help of photography, she would like to understand and experience this way of perception as much as possible, something which we all have gone through in the past but is unable to recall those memories by ourselves. When reading about this stage of child development, she came across numerous concepts which helped her to give her project a certain base, a foundation: the role of lies in fantasy, memories attached to certain actions, tale-consciousness, artificialism, aesthetical emotions, depiction as only functional activity, portraying ill-proportioned, only based on emotional attachments.

 

Using photography as a tool for transmitting vision via contemporary still-life and object photography, she wishes to be discovering and grab the fine line between the real and the composed picture. Though the idea itself came to her thanks to her son, the series is not about him; he is present as a lens, bringing his way of abstract thinking, helping Bohus to understand that better. She hopes that through the interactions with him, that special, unique energy will show, the original functions of the objects will shift- and she is to be documenting the results in a pre-built environment.

 

To explore the idea completely, she uses multiple approaches: besides presenting the objects her son focused on, without their original context, she also created snapshots and presented real-time objects to help deepen the experience. With looking at her son’s creations, behaviour, and reactions from an artist’s perspective, it became clear quickly that this idea is an incredibly rich and complex concept, in which the passing of time will also play an important role. As he grows up, his idea of the world around him will broaden, the proportions of fantasy and reality in his mind will change. Bohus wishes to approach this project with the aim of expanding it in the future, into a story of long-term development. It would be fascinating to follow his journey until he starts attending school or even further: reaching richer and more realistic stages in life, how consciousness and sensibility will become his main ways of perception. Her long-term goal is to create a photo book, in which the photos taken throughout many years could form into a final concept.

 

Time has no hands nor mouth by Réka Bohus  (HU)

May 25 – June 25, 2022
TOBE Gallery | Budapest, Hungary

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

 

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