Hajnal Németh

Butterfly - Version 1

Video installation

Ebensperger Rhomberg, Salzburg, 2018

Butterfly is a sort of minimized monument to David Bowie.
Each of two symmetrically placed MDF boards have round holes of varying sizes cut in them, just like the front plates of loudspeaker cabinets. There are, however, no speakers here, nor loudspeakers, only imaginary ones evoked by the shape and position of the carved-out MDF boards.
Taking abstraction as an approach, the two ghost-loudspeakers assert themselves as references rather than statements. Formally, however, they are present more as panels for dividing space or masking out light; panels, that on a fictive level, isolate the internal space of sound production from the external space of sound reception, while on the level of reality project their own distorted shadow on the wall, blocking the path of the light.
They are at once a gate and a wall, a symmetrical torso, a gigantic “Butterfly” spreading its wings, engulfed by its pulsating red and pink aura. The regular system of colours alternating and repeating in an extremely slow rhythm creates a profound harmony broken by momentary flashes of David Bowie’s on-stage silhouette. A body wedged between wings flashes up for periods just above the threshold of perception, as if it were the sense behind the pre-produced symmetrical/geometrical machine.

Photo: Ebensperger Rhomberg