Ágnes Eperjesi - slices of self - portraits

In the spring of 2004 Ágnes Eperjesi is exhibiting three new, related series - taken from the flotsam and jetsam of pop culture. Her works exhibited at the kArton gallery bring to life a family story and various female behavioural roles.

Eperiesi, for her point of departure, takes the depiction of women on the packaging of commercial items, which offer a kind of reflection on the image of women constructed by society. The graphics and pictograms placed on the packaging of goods point to the stereotypes, which, though perhaps less apparent on the level of verbal communication and common parlance, still exist. By defining them as self-portraits she reshapes, or rather brings into play, these stereotypes. Through this gesture we suddenly find ourselves in a world whose basic schematics are familiar us all, although the images and their descriptions are nevertheless ordered according to a puzzling and impersonal recollection. Uniquely-tailored stories made to fit different individuals emerge before us and the images follow each other like the conjugation patterns of a half-familiar language. By the time we have seen the exhibition, we have learned our lives a little.

"The rotation into the negative, in the case of Eperiesi too, distances one from reality - if indeed physical reality is the only reality -, and makes visible the processes of the mental realm, or the fine mechanism of the professes of identification. The relationship of the image and the text in the self-portraits corresponds to negative-positive rotation; the text either opposes the illusion created by the image or further enhances it. Sometimes the text reflects the phases of identification with externally projected role models, other times it brings into view the faltering of that mechanism, making the dilemmas and denials visible while circumnavigating the most trivial terrains of women's lives," writes Edit András in her exhibition introduction entitled "Melyik az Igazi?" ("Which one is real?"). The latter, kArton's pair-exhibition of "Self-portait Slices," where Ágnes Eperiesi acquaints us with various types of men, is on view until 26 March in the Vintage Gallery.