Lajos Csontó
1964, Budapest
Lajos Csontó graduated as a graphic artist from the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in 1990. He is a representative of ‘sensual conceptualism’; tactility, visual and aesthetic qualities hold equal significance in his practice.
Over time, graphic and painting techniques have become less and less prominent in his practice, with photography, video, and text becoming dominant, which he transforms into installations, spatial, and complex visual artworks. A defining characteristic of his work is its enigmatic nature, significantly influenced by the texts he employs. Rather than serving as mere illustrations, the images he pairs with his texts function as 'emotional pictures,' akin to how word associations evoke poetic imagery in the viewer. Csontó’s exhibitions often bring the viewer into play, assigning viewers an active role, and confronting them with the dilemmas presented in his works – his aim is not simply to communicate or express ideas but to open up a fluid, thought-provoking set of questions.
The genre of self-portraiture has been a recurring theme in his practice since the 1980s, serving as a form of confrontation and self-analysis, examining and documenting the characteristics of his current state of being. He has also explored the possibilities of working with archives, focusing on how an artist can relate to his earlier works as reflections of his own past, and how an image can be transformed into something personal and unique. The artist's collection of tens of thousands of photographs captures strange, grotesque, joyous moments, attention-grabbing situations, and aesthetically compelling or attractive phenomena. In these ‘instant’ photographs a series of conceptual and sensual visual games emerge as metaphors for conscious and emotional perception of the world. Recently he has been creating layered photographs by incorporating a second visual layer – this layer can be a drawing, an object, fragments of text, or a surface of any kind of material with symbolic meaning. The photogram-like prints are intended to engage with the mystical, intuitive, subconscious aspects of the individual.
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