Thresholds

Yanos Cseh

September 8th - September 30th, 2023

Opening reception Friday, September 8th 6-9pm

Thresholds, a solo show by Janos Cseh. To Cseh, language is both an abstraction and a structure. Supposedly a fixed system, language’s malleability allows for both communication and misunderstanding. Cseh explores the liminality of language in his word-based wall work by toying with the canvas’s shape and spatial constraints. His paintings find a playful rhythm through the repetition of a word, creating distinct and fluid compositions. Layering the letters into an image evokes the uncanny meaninglessness of saying a word over and over again. But the inviting color schemes celebrate the dissociation between symbol and symbolized as an opening where we can see ourselves and our experiences reflected in language.

The curvilinear canvases expand that opening, literally shaping language to Cseh’s thinking rather than the other way around. In this slippage between word and shape, space and speech, his art conjures both the ephemeral and concrete phenomena we encounter in physical places: sunlight streaming through a window, or a view to the outside world from indoors.

Windows make a fitting analogy for Thresholds. We build windows to allow ourselves to experience the otherwise boundless. Language similarly constrains the ineffable, but it also opens a door to understanding. While designed for looking, it only takes a bit of action, dexterity, and imagination for a window to become a door.

Janos Cseh b.1993 is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. His work addresses the relationship between spatial perception and language. Cseh is currently pursuing his MFA in painting at Hunter College in New York City.