worksákos rajnaicollabs

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Photo, image, artwork - György Jozipovics graphic artist (2022)
Experiences from two large-size works by Ákos Rajnai.

Let me introduce my thoughts on photography, images, artworks, which Ákos Rajnai is very much involved in. But I will not begin with him, but a phenomenon that I have experienced with several photographers. For a long time, I did not understand why photographers turn to painting (There are photographers who take pictures as if they were hyper-realistic paintings, because they are composed like the works of a painter. Or they adjust the otherwise plane experience of perceiving a photograph to the classical fine art view, the solution of which is a thin photographic paper, pasteboard, thin frame, placed in space more elevated from the plane of the wall, similar to painting, with blind-framed canvas, frame).

The essence of the solutions is to elevate the photograph to the values of fine art.

What can be the reason for that?

It just hit me, because there is a natural desire on the part of the artist and the recipient as well to have the works of art seen by all as artworks, masterpieces perhaps, but in any case, to be treated as art. Rightly so. Even if a photo is good, it is not sure to become a work of art. A photograph maps an image of what is in front of it, through the lens or a hole, which is why many people think it cannot achieve the status of artworks. 

Many photographers work through a photographic process, but they create work on a highly intuitive level, spontaneously, more in tune with their instincts, honestly and unpretentiously. The process of grasping intuition and imagination and then creating the image is similar to that of the old master painters. These artists are reaching a level just like the great artists of art history. So there is no difference between them. I could list many Hungarian photographers who work or have worked this way.

The Substance series of Ákos Rajnai reflects all this.

The size of the image, its surface and the fact that it is on canvas as a medium for emulsion, strongly suggests and indeed it could be a painting, but it is not.

When the viewer looks at it, several things may come to mind, and if the person is close to scientific thinking, they will get the message. The image is made up of points of energy that create matter, and we can see the energy coalescing into metal, and also sense that it is all surrounded by dark matter. If someone wants to visualise how this scientifically defined process works, this image can help.

There is humour and irony in it, because why would anyone think of photographing a small-pitch football goal, especially when they have never had anything to do with football. This irony is something you can slowly come to realise.

So this internal goal is special.



What does the goal as an internal image mean?

The goal means that we should step over something, while we suspect that everything on the other side of the goal will be different from this side. We have reached a border that we can only be freely crossed through the goal. We know our old place, we are safe here. But I am very intrigued by the border where this goal stands.

This internal border is very far from the borders of everyday life. It is like the biggest internal border with the dilemma that goes with it. Should I cross or not, what will happen there, am I afraid or will I have the courage to do it, is my curiosity stronger than my fear? These questions are on everyone's mind.

The image of the clothes dryer also brings up an interesting theme, for me it is primarily the desire to purify and the need and possibility of healing, that is, to remove what stains the clothes and the body. Although the photo does not depict washing, but suggests the process, at least the end of it (if someone can go that far). This desire can also be physical healing, because it also necessitates creating a new, pure, healthy attitude which is the basis of healing. But cleansing is not only about the body, it is also about getting rid of habits, persistent dogmas, wrong ideas. So the picture sends the message that it is necessary to get rid of these too.

I have known Ákos Rajnai for almost twenty years and I have seen that he is always looking for the limits that he can reach and go beyond, but he always realised that these limits are not yet significant, so he has to look for another one, and so he stopped what he was doing. But now he has reached a border that cannot be crossed easily. For this reason, these images cannot be improved any further, this is the end, there is no more, but it is also difficult to create new ones afterwards, unless another strong intuitive thought manifests itself.

Because these works were born from a strong intuitive force in the artist that has persisted over the years, and this has helped to deepen the process. The role of the creator is not necessarily to understand what he has created, but to project from within himself (as deeply as possible) what is inside of him. But Ákos Rajnai has realised many things over this long period of time, so he is able to verbalise what has come to the surface.

Now we have before us two masterpieces that few people appreciate in their entirety, but which give something to almost every human quality. To some people it might be that it is something, or maybe not, and maybe it resembles something, but then it does not. To others, it gives value, a creative work and a speciality because it is a work of art. And for many, it triggers imagination and intuition, and also provides a new perspective.  For some people, the image will give the essence.About Substance series - by Dr. Attila Horányi art historian (2019)
A few years ago, I had to give a lecture on whether every photograph is a picture. Common sense would of course dictate that it obviously is. What kind of a question is that? In doing so it forgets all the devices that can capture light or any range of light, which can produce ‘visuals’ that may not even be visible to the naked eye. However, scientists who study or use light or, more broadly, radiation in their research, and who immediately 'see' these ranges, they often know nothing of the fact that the word 'picture' is not at all self-evident, that not all recorded images are, therefore, also self-evidently pictures. It is clear that some people are fascinated by the complexity of recording light; others by the history or philosophy of images; and others, of course, by the data sets that appear to be images on social media platforms.

While preparing for the lecture, I had to formulate my own response; but before I got that far, I had to contend with my own everyday mind which soon relegated the topic to the annoying mire of superfluous questions. It is not a secret that Ákos Rajnai's pictures are among the works that helped me to feel the gravity of the question. These pictures of Ákos are large-scale works created using photographic processes. These works quite clearly - and literally - represent a possible endpoint of photography and imagery: they are still photographs, and still just images. They are photographs, because they were made with a device and process that captures light: a very simple digital camera with minimal light sensitivity, whose image was projected onto a canvas coated with a light-sensitive emulsion, and then the artist recorded the changes that formed there - that is what we see. And they are pictures as well, because a clothes dryer and a small-pitch football goal are clearly recognisable in them: these are represented by visual means.

Meanwhile, they are hardly photographs at all: rather, I would call them minimally informative data sets made with digital tools, "stuck" in an emulsion applied with remarkable contingency, and only a small step away from being seen as mechanical paintings. And they are barely pictures either: although the main lines of the skeletal objects originally depicted stand out as clusters of density points, the ratio of information to noise, with this contingency, is disconcerting. This is exacerbated by the contingency of the 'visuals': the applied technique makes objects appear in 'negative', i.e. almost luminous when illuminated; and the noise removes all spatial relationship and makes the two objects appear to float. The two objects, which are hardly worth mentioning, let alone depicting, are also two (practically) found objects, ready-made, which, unlike the Duchampian antetype, have lost all objectivity. Perhaps this was also the reason for their selection: they are hardly objects at all, more like skeletons; structures in such a way as to structure the image.

Photograph, but barely; image, but barely - mostly a densification and thinning of dots. Ambient landscape where we can walk from point to point, sometimes on marked paths, sometimes unassisted, left to our own devices, sometimes in darkness, sometimes in light. This ambient landscape is not necessarily a landscape image, albeit a picture with a frame. Its reduction counters the usual image of our object-laden world. It displays the infinite openness of "almost nothing".