Rita Koszorús & Ján Jánoš | STAY FOREVER

11.11. — 2.12.2023

If you want to meet me today, look up at the starry sky. If you want to see me tomorrow, listen to the waves. The noise disturbs me, I put my ear to the shell and listen to the ocean. Shall we talk through feeling and touch the water. I’m afraid of loneliness, but when I think of you, I have courage. Let’s run away, so we can still make it, to dive into the deep water.

R+J

We seek a balance between continual escape and continuance. The desire to build a private living space is uncompromisingly collapsing by the need to find out what the unknown holds further ahead. We don’t allow ourselves a bond that cuts our freedom short; on the contrary, we wrap ourselves around with a chain. Tomorrow is more than today. We wake up with art, we are angry, sometimes moved, we know each other intimately, we talk constantly, we scream, we cry, then we laugh. We shape life. We learn to listen to each other and work with each other’s feelings. What was yesterday is no longer true today. We want to stay in one place, but at the same time we don’t have time to do so. Our clear consciousness is dazed by all the friendships, stories, smells and colors that await us somewhere. And at the same time, there is always someone missing us right where we are not at the moment. We have to become solid rocks that can support the other person when they can no longer manage on their own, and at the same time to bear the sadness that paradoxically comes from joy. We don’t show fierce nakedness, we keep things to ourselves. We embody physicality, is it a trap or a freedom? We don’t depict, we create and connect, we don’t calculate, we experience and listen. We want that „here and now“ to make sense. We shape the clay while it is soft, we sand it when it is hard. We are fragile, yet resilient. We have learned what works for us. Water is magical, it changes us at will. When you’re sad, somewhere far away, find it.

The exhibition of visual artist Rita Koszorús and designer Ján Jánoš is their second joint presentation after eight years. Although they are primarily presenting themselves separately on the contemporary art scene, their work has become intensely intertwined over the past years and is anchored in similar interests, intentions and aesthetics. Both of them move naturally and freely in the fields of art, whether applied or visual.

In addition to paintings and silver jewellery, they have prepared a site-specific installation for the Station Gallery, reflecting the couple’s private and artistic cohabitation, which they symbolically represent through water. On one hand, they allow the viewer to momentarily enter a personal story; on the other hand, they point to the today‘s, alarmingly subtle position of water. The artists have worked with a whole atmosphere involving the character of Rita Koszorús’s works, which are based on the principle of collage, and the organic presence of the contrast between nature and the city, which are the guiding principles for Ján Jánoš. It is the embodiment of the idea and symbols of the chain and water, which intertwine and meet in them. Water is the chain that strengthens the bond between human and nature, and between people and each other. At the same time, it is unpredictable, sometimes cruel, magical, full of contrasts. It strengthens, overflows, solidifies, or sinks. Stay Forever represents a cry and expression of love for the greatness without which our existence is impossible. The intertwining of the artists‘ work is mainly encountered in the imagination, in which they feel free and, thanks to this, boldly break the rules of visual media or themes.