Luca Sára Rózsa
Luca Sára Rózsa: During the process of my work, larger-scale phenomena and global problems serve as a starting point, which – although my focus remains on mankind -are then not examined in a socially critical tone or with a fact-finding attitude. Rather, my goal is to understand man as a living being in his reactions to a given phenomenon or problem. I work in cycles on various topics that interest me, but which I try to come to a general conclusion about that may be of interest to other people as well. I spent a long time understanding the human need for religion and then or at the same time for power: our need for permanence, which may be somewhat provided by a god or a ruler, stems from our finite and uncertain existence. Thus, from the moment on that the consciousness of death is grounded and our fear of it appears, it’s a short way to go towards religion, loyalty towards power or to the most daring ideologies. Later, the big problem of our present, the completely tyrannical evisceration of nature came to my attention. I put my figures back to nature, from which they have long since moved away, and which they still believe may be the object of their possession: here however, man is already fallen, naked and vulnerable, as he has no real control over the environment. Lately I’ve been greatly impressed by Albert Camus’ absurd philosophy. I placed my figures in a utopian, dreamlike landscape of solitude, where they are forced to face their own anxieties stemming from the eternity of the world and the insurmountable contradiction of their own finality.
Hi Luca, tell us about your background. How and when did you first start to paint?
Hello, I started painting pretty “late” actually. I’ve drawn ever since I can remember but I was already 19 when I realised painting was fun. I applied to printmaking at college but then surrounded by painters I realised that I’d prefer to change my focus to painting. Being sort of an impatient person, printmaking turned out to be too circumstantial for me, whereas painting was something immediate and I liked that about it. The sizes could grow quicker, the colors could be seen together straight away. Of course, back in college (and then in university) my budget for materials was pretty low and my impatience to work still remained, so often I used cheap and bad materials. This obviously led some paintings to end up in garbage. It took quite a while for me to calm down a little and understand that the quality of the materials was sometimes the key to the painting’s survival.
What is your process like? How do you begin to work?
Lately I started to take sketches more seriously. If I have an idea, I make a quick pencil drawing in my yellow sketchbook, mainly to remember what I had in mind. Then I have a red sketchbook too, in which I make a fair copy of the first drawing, more in detail and I use markers to have a rough idea about the colors too. And then it’s time to paint. Sometimes I have more of these sketches, and I choose whichever I feel more excited to see on canvas but of course there are some sketches that never become paintings.
There’s always a circle of thoughts I get very much involved with, so as long as I feel connected to the theme, I work with it. This is the reason why I work in series. I’m terrified of routine-like-picture-building, so as soon as I realize I’m approaching the trap of routine, I move on. This obviously doesn’t mean that I have endless ideas that just follow each other. Sometimes it takes time to see where the next step leads, both in thoughts and pictorial language.
When did you become interested in Albert Camus’ philosophy? And how does it appear in your works?
I’ve been unable to understand death ever since I was a kid. The thought of life having an end always generated fears and questions concerning the point of life in my head. So, after stepping back from religion, I searched for answers amongst big thinkers. But Camus, specifically stepped in my life when the whole Covid situation appeared in Hungary, which was in March, 2019. I read an article about Camus’ The Plague and I said ‘that’s my man’! And I was right! I read 4 books of his straight away and I wouldn’t say I agree with all his philosophy but at many points I felt like he doesn’t only have the same questions that I do but he can also give me some strategies for life I could stick myself to.
The concept of the absurd is what I -let’s say- quoted the most. Camus uses the term of absurd to define the irresolvable contradiction between the individual’s life being finite and the infinity of the world. Infinity is something we hardly understand and the indifference of the world towards the death of the individual is something that can be hard to bear. The point is, at a certain point you might ask yourself what does really make sense, when you realise that your life is like a second and you’re small like a molecule in comparison with the infinity of the world time and size wise? So how do you find a target in your life?
The absurd first appeared in my “Wannabes” paintings, which focused on a self that battles with Camus’s absurd, a self that struggles and kicks and wants to be somebody but is consumed by the merciless time and space. The English slang word „Wannabe” designates (besides other meanings) an individual with little self-confidence, who needs a role model or an idea to identify with and by doing so he manages to become somebody.
Later, the same term appeared differently in my Paradise series. The figures in the foreground of the imaginary landscape had nonsensical anatomies and their bodies were all tangled up. Paradise is the symbolic moment/place where man decided to choose curiosity, wisdom and doubt at the moment he ate from the forbidden apple tree, and while this path opened up possibilities, it also did open its gates for fears.
How are religion and power displayed in your paintings?
It is mainly on the paintings between 2017-2019 that I was trying to understand how and why power and religion appeared (and remained) in the life of mankind. The idea was that our quest for permanence – that is, things eternal of imperishable value – derives from our finite and uncertain existence; in order to shape our view of life, we need a solid handhold which helps to make existential pressure and the doubts related to it easier to bear. We submit ourselves to principles, ideologies, churches (and gods) and mighty humans, using them to personify the wished for stability we strive to attain. They are the foundation-stones of our conscience, the judges of our lives, they will guide us and set aims and purposes for us; they will also be the ones who, to assure their own survival, silence our doubts about existence and its meaning.
When working on these paintings I took inspiration from 15th – 17th century iconography, as well as the domain of representative portraiture. The figures depicted in the paintings are stiff (as if some action were frozen until the end of times) – some sit on thrones, others wear crowns, and they all look out at us and witness our frailty. They are the procurators of this heavy permanence, so difficult to construe, the strongholds we build to defend ourselves, as well as our own oppressors.
In most recent years I grabbed out stories of the Old Testament- such as the story of the exile from paradise or the flood – and reinterpreted them to create my own mythology to understand the world around me.
Most of the characters are twin distorted, stretched and stuck together. What is the story behind it?
If I want to go back to its real origin, that was back in the time of the beginning of university. I used to paint myself as Siamese twins. I guess it was rather an experiment of distortion, but it meant a sort of schizophrenia I felt about being a painter that was supposed to talk to people, but I realized that the whole art world was something really closed.
Later the motif of the Siamese twins showed up time to time, usually with something a little different to talk about but it was always in connection with an emotional or logical contradiction.
Most recently it appeared to represent two philosophies about how to give a reason to life. Western logic puts individuality to the center of the focus. To defeat death, one must prove the best of itself, the starting point is the ego. In the meantime, the East says, the reason for your life is to be a drop in the ocean, to be a small element of the entire cycle that creates the world itself. Here, the starting point the whole, the one. As a human and as a painter as well I tend to move from one philosophy to the other. When I don’t see the answer in one of them, I go and find my peace in the other one and vice versa.
What does your artwork represent?
Not an easy question. It is in painting that I find my way of expression amongst all possibilities, being it one of the oldest forms of art and one of the easiest to read. When painting my pictures, I strive for a kind of iconicity, a time and space freeze, something that suggests permanence. I try to paint my figures, who are in this seemingly dramatic atmosphere of thought, in such a way that they bear the signs of a contradictory philosophical basic position: it is important that they are beautiful, but visibly flawed and fallible, and that their posture exudes dignity and vulnerability at the same time.
How has your practice changed over time?
I learned painting in a very academic way. So, before all I spent years only drawing from real life models. This practice gave me a good knowledge to base on, but also tied my hands for a good while because I was unable to free myself from the “right way” of painting or drawing something, it took years to put models and photos aside and paint only from my head. Then I had a quite expressive period that came along with me giving up study-like paintings. I enjoyed putting thick layers of paint, after a while I even gave up using brushes and painted most of the canvases with my hand. I barely had any sketches before starting to work. I let everything be decided on the canvases. I liked that my decisions and mistakes appeared on the finished paintings. In the studio everything around me was a mess and covered in paint, my nails looked terrible, as if I had dug earth the whole day. And it was a couple of years ago that I cooled down and I think I understood my own tone better. My “expressivity” changed to a something rather thoughtful than visually obvious. I started to focus more on the sketches, clear what I really wanted to do on the canvas. This actually saved me some time and nerves too, and less painting ended up in the garbage.
Describe a real-life situation that inspired you.
I had two experiences with birds. One of them was exactly a year ago in Athens, as we were headed to the Athens Biennale with my husband, we went across a square where there was a huge group of pigeons. We noticed that one of them would not stand on its feet, it was “sitting” on the ground in a very not-pigeon-like pose. Then we noticed that the other pigeons went on top of it, pecked its feather out, and harmed it in every possible way. The poor thing tried to protect itself, but it was obviously sick and very weak. After long minutes of this completely uneven fight, another pigeon went on top of it again, and with all its very last strength it shook the other one off, then flipped over and died. It was like an emotionally very compact drama; we were really moved by the whole scene.
The other one was in Budapest by one of the tramlines, this year. This time there was a dead pigeon again, a two different kind of birds, a crow, and can’t recall the other one, were fighting over the dead body. Both birds wanted to own the pigeon.
Altogether, I like observing people and I felt like there is so much of instinctiveness in human behavior, that is something that comes from the fact that we are animals too.
How has the city you are living and working in influenced you and the art you make?
I love Budapest, with all its flaws I think it’s a very nice city to live in. I think it’s quite vivid culturally and it’s crowded with great artists. The endless number of exhibitions and “art talks” I’ve experienced in the past 10 years have been a great impact for sure. But not to forget the most important I’ve been sharing my studio spaces ever since I finished university with three of my best friends, Attila Bagi, Adrienn Dér and Mónika Kárándi, all of them painters (originally) with whom I’ve always had the possibility to talk about our works, they’ve been a big source of inspiration. We also do a group show yearly and this shared procedure gives a lot.
What is your dream project?
To be invited to any art institution in the world with the above-mentioned friends to do a show would be great 😊 Same for a solo show or an invitation to the biennale would rock of course, but I feel like I’m fulfilling my dream projects every time I’m standing ahead an exhibition. I once want to do a duo show with my grandmother, who’s passed away 13 years ago already, but I learned a lot from her. She never became an artist herself, but she’s done lots of amazing works to herself only.
