Charles A. Csuri: Silent Statues
Artist(s):
Title:
- Silent Statues
Exhibition:
Creation Year:
- 1989
Medium:
- Unix environment, LightJet on paper with laminate
Size:
- 76 x 102 cm (30 x 40 in)
Category:
Artist Statement:
Silent Statues
Elements of still life and landscape, structural diligence, and a looser, more painterly lyricism than that found in his other computer art are present in Csuri’s Silent Statues and demonstrate the artist’s exceptional sensitivity and range. Simulated images of the human body fade to varying degrees away from the viewer’s eyes. This play of substantive form creates a rhythmic pattern that ranges in tone from light to dark. Movement of line and texture provides the third dimension, transforming the composition into a spatial reality. They flow over and across the virtual canvas, creating a single, tightly woven chromatic surface. Line and shape enable the viewer to interpret the painting simultaneously as landscape, still life, or both.
The biomorphic forms and the gaps between them become, to some extent, synonymous. What do these figures illustrate? The meaning is not apparent. We can guess at the underlying sense only by imagining a larger whole from which these statues have been abstracted. Armless human bodies, standing rooted to the ground as columns, generate a vertical symmetry with respect to a horizontal axis. These ghostly silhouettes advance and recede from their surroundings, enduring the eroding pressures of the space around them. The created space does not subvert the substantiality or the integrity of the picture plane.
What was painterly in Csuri’s early, traditional art of paint and canvas is still present in this new medium, expressed in the articulated touches of light and shadow, as well as in the palpable brushwork of the background. Using the computer as an artistic partner, Csuri moves freely between constructed figuration on one side and imagery with classic forms and allusions on the other in repeated oscillation. All this he accomplishes without loss of natural flair or aptitude for intense fantasy and expressiveness.
