Gábor Koós
1986 born in Lucenec, Slovakia
Lives and works in Budapest, Hungary

My work is about preserving. I record and document personally relevant issues, objects, and places. This approach is in line with diary-writing.

I wanted to find the simplest and most direct way of preserving. I also wanted my work to reflect my personal affection to the documented objects. From this motivation, two techniques emerged, which are both deeply rooted in the tradition of printmaking, but in a way that also completely negates this tradition. The first approach was direct printing by using frottage technique; I basically applied paint on my object, which then became the matrix, and by printing it on paper, I was able to save the traces of people around me, the grass in the park, or a piece of stone. That intimate gesture, the way the paper touches something I manually rub against, means a lot to me. That the object is there at that moment, and I am there too, we touch for a little while.

The other approach is based on woodcut technique. Large-scale woodcuts allow me to preserve and transmit the experience and monumentality of bigger objects and spaces. I arrange these artworks as one installation, where I place the print and the corresponding matrix in the same space. Showing both reflects my approach to printmaking. Although woodcutting is a reproductive technique, I strictly create unique prints, exhibiting the matrix and the print of the artwork as one unit.