Light art
Péter Kozma divided his light painting into two conceptually distinct eras and methods: Raypainting, created with Dóra Berkes, and the later, independent and collective Light Art Installation projects.[1]
Raypainting (with Dóra Berkes)
Hand-painted glass plates of 18 × 18 cm were projected with high-performance Pani projectors onto buildings, hillsides or whole districts. Kozma was responsible for the technical execution, the choice of site and the spatial organisation; Dóra Berkes painted the glass plates. The aim was the "poetry of light", a visual frottage and mimicry in which the projected image and the surface carrying it create a new quality.[1][2]
In his own account, painting on 18 × 18 cm glass goes back to the projector developed in Vienna in the 1950s by Ludwig Pani and the stage designer Schneider-Siemssen, and he drew on this stage-design tradition while lifting it into a wider space. He describes the installation as a performance without the classical split into audience, stage and backdrop: there are at least two projected planes, and the viewers, moving among them, become performers and a kind of moving screen.
More: Raypainting.
Light Art Installation (2006–2010)
From the mid-2000s his interest turned to a more structured, analytical approach. He moved away from the "cavalcade of colours" of Raypainting and researched the concept of Augmented Space: the analysis of urban spaces and the deconstruction and reinterpretation of architectural elements. He often worked with other visual artists, including Zsolt Bordos, Zoltán Ferenczi, Béla Hegyi, Ivó Kovács and Norbert Szabó.[1]
A 2006 text on his Komárom installation says that, instead of the painted glass slides of Raypainting, he was examining the potential of digitally created images in his own works.
His projections relied on Pani projection technology. For Essen in 2006 the press release reports 18 projectors with 132,000 watts and 1,640,000 lumen; he joked that Pani supplied him with the best "light brushes" in the world.
Recurring ideas
- The biotope. In his own account, self-contained, living spaces occupied him from childhood, and he set out to create a bounded "biotope space" with its own climate in the city. He rejected the neutralised exhibition hall: everyday life should be part of the art.
- Slowing down. The 2006 Essen press release describes his work as a counterpoint to speed and consumption: Kozma wants to "ent-schleunigen" (de-accelerate) the world.
- City and network. m.city (2007) and Timescan (2008) asked how networked culture has changed our perception of space.
- Moholy-Nagy. The curator Mária Nagy places the precedents of his light painting in László Moholy-Nagy's space and light modulators; the Raypainting histories name the rayogram, Moholy-Nagy's Light-Space Modulator, Orphism and Nicolas Schöffer as precursors.[2]
See all works and exhibitions.