Gabor Koós

Gabor Koós keeps things by touching them, pressing paper to a wall, a blade to a plank, or a scan to a body. For years he has made prints that act as records: the street outside his flat, the courtyard, the metro car that carries him to his studio. He presents each unique print with its carved block or rubbed surface because the memory and its source belong together. For him it is a way of preserving an autonomous life without multiplying it.

Lately he has been working with darkness as a material. In a museum with twenty four skylights, he drew each window on soft paper, printed the drawings, then erased their whites with Musou Black, dot by dot, until the surface drank the light. In the space he placed a light absorbing plane opposite the windows, and on the walls he hung the blackened prints he calls ohaguro paintings. The room dims, the eye adjusts, and tiny silver greys begin to appear.

Sculpture brought the shadow even closer. He scans, accepts the glitches, and 3D prints the fragments. The resulting figures feel like doubles and animal alter egos, held close and held at bay. They carry the rough mesh of the data and the psychology of the shadow, the parts we repress that continue living on our behalf.

Whether he is turning a gas meter into a reliquary, rubbing a wall onto paper, letting a window be swallowed by black, or shaping a post digital body that refuses to smooth itself out, his aim remains the same: keep the trace, let the dark in, and create a place where looking lasts long enough to befriend what we would rather avoid.