In his second solo exhibition at Kisterem, Gábor Kristóf presents his latest series. The material of Untitleist is the result of years of experimentation, with elements that have now expanded in size. Kristóf started working with powder coating in 2015 and has since then explored the application of this industrial technique, which produces surfaces similar to enamel paint, and the related possibilities of expanding the RAL colour range through several series. In 2020, he produced his first works inspired by the exclusive world of golf, of which he presented a larger selection at his solo exhibition Picnic on the Driving Range in Bánská Štiavnica. This time, Kisterem will present works inspired by the specific terminology of the sport, with compositions created by layering layers of powder paint that evoke the golf phenomenon through typographic experiments, abstracting it into textures.
Opening speech by Piotr Sikora, curator of the exhibition
Golf is never about golf, it’s always about something else.
—Mark Twain
OK let’s get ready, and by getting ready I mean GET READY!! hands up, head down, marching on, turn around, feel your joins, embrace the pain, the world has ended we are the only ones who remained.
The letters that surround you work more like battle cries than anything else. It’s been a while since they were disassociated from their meanings and melted together in a melange of forms that go beyond semiotics. Some of them are readable, meanwhile others resemble abstract heraldry of this new world. We have launched this world on the ruins of the old order. We, the golfers, the untitlists, the heavy-sack overmen who wear no titles but these colors.
Life concentrates here in the oasis of this golf course, regulated by ultra-violent laws defining interactions across social strata. These fields are the only places where the record of human existence is noticeable. Human, humans, or rather a swarming collection of thugs who just got a social promotion and now are trying to combat each other over any excuse. All the rest of the world has been taken by a poisonous mushroom cloud and burned at 3000 degrees Celsius.
Oh, brothers! My brothers in crime. My brothers pumped up on Moloko and unspeakably intrusive and vibrant just like colorful letters on these shields. If you make it so far I have the right and pleasure to anticipate you will become members of our club, and hold your club with barbaric confidence. Let me provide you with these five basic rules:
1. Work on fundamentals
Grip the club, step, and bow, and adjust your feet
Aww, haven’t we? We have adjusted just fine after the nuclear tension broke out like Tycho Brahe’s bladder and covered the world with fire. Staying within the club was the only way to survive. Bending over backward to forget what we have and build the structure which would withstand another end of the world. We used the power that reaches back to the most basic and clear instinct which was left to us by nature – the egoistic fury to remain.
2. Try to get the ball… into the air
Fly little birdie, fly little bogey
Just look at it. Look through it. Try to get it. What’s in the ball’s mind? What is inside of her? It is not the club that gives you the power to dominate other inhabitants of the golf course, it is the ball. Don’t be afraid to hit your friends on your practice swings to get this feeling. The overwhelming feeling of ultra-violence.
[a voice from the past] A very good friend told me this story about his distant cousin who used to play golf very well. She has been thinking about going professional until she got hit by a ball once. Don’t worry. Nothing happened to her, I mean physically. The ball smashed the peak of her cap and ricocheted into the lake. It took her some time to find it but man wasn’t she determined. She went straight to the water and dived to hunt down the ball as if it was prey. We saw her appearing in the lounge soaking wet. She went straight to the manager and asked for the giant scissors then cut the ball in half. Imagine how gagged we were when inside this little sphere there was a little inscription written in orange letters. I couldn’t see it from behind her back. Anyhoo. That was it for her career and believed me or not but she never set foot on a golf course again.
3. Know how hard your clubs can go
There is no border to violence
There is a border of your golf course, your oasis, your island. The rage comes from within and strikes far. Further, you knew. Further, then you’d expect.
Or is it too far? Too ugly for your taste? Too loud and too ultra-violent? Well, guess what. That’s the way it is.
4. Short-game priority order
Don’t waste your time on useless sobriety
Burn your memory and forget your mother tongue so the words and letters carbonate together and merge in sculptural skeleton shapes. Make your language a nuclear core that would melt and implode. Cover your tongue with hot lead and swallow it. Shout to notify the seconds, yell to count the minutes and hours. Time is nothing but suffering – kill it. Again.
5. Learn rules and etiquette
The rule is – there are no rules
Let’s face it. Our system is the best! It allows us to embrace violence and turn it into a virtue. It gives it shape and meaning. It turns it into a discipline. Golf never was about golf after all. It was about elegant execution about suspense before you chop one’s head off. We are turning your bourgeoise nightmares into wet dreams. Giving it material forms. Letters, words. Expressive and violent. Thrumbling in the void. Egotistical and true. More beautifully than The Ninth Symphony played over and over and over again.
[a voice from the past] So what was golf really about? esoterics? violence? kinky stuff? after all, we are running around like blue-ass flies with one aim: to complete the hole. What is it about? getting a title? domesticating nature? naturalizing ourselves by taking these never-ending walks through the bunkers and fairways and greens. Ultimately a golf course is nothing but an oasis where we all are going to hide one day, the day when the end of the world as we know it will reach us.
Foooreee!
Give it a good slice sir!
that’s a great pitch sir!
what’s the tee?
oh just spill the tee you blood-thirsty lizard lord.
Piotr Sikora
Supported using public funding by Minority Culture Fund.
Thanks: Raktech Kft., Electron Hungary
photography by Dávid Biró