BUTTERFLY

Hajnal Németh, “Butterfly”, 2018, video installation
Exhibition view: Ebensperger Rhomberg, Salzburg, 2019
Photo by Sebastian Hoffmann

Video installation at the exhibition “Something Common” in the space of Ebensperger Rhomberg, Salzburg, 2019.

Two black shadows obscure some details from the video, which shows extreme slow-moving colour overlays and occasional flashes of images. The two wooden boards in the way of the projection are each fitted with round cut-outs of different sizes, as are the front panels of the speaker cabinets. But here there is no sound and no speakers, only imaginary ones, evoked by the shape and position of the cut-out wooden panels.

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.

Hajnal Németh, “Butterfly”, Version 2, 2008 – 2018
Video installation, projected video loop and two symmetrically cut wooden boards, variable dimensions