Artists

Andreas Fogarasi

Press release

Lombardi–Kargl is pleased to present Three Light Sources, the eighth solo exhibition by Andreas Fogarasi at the gallery. Light serves as a unifying motif, linking the works materially and conceptually. The collection, organization, and transformation of materials, as well as their relocation into new contexts, are among the central strategies of his artistic practice. Initiated in 2003, towards the end of his studies, the series Public Brands emerged from Fogarasi's research into the logos and visual identities of public administration. During this period, cities, regions, and nation-states increasingly developed distinct brand identities, embodying a neoliberal understanding of governance. They came to perceive themselves as competing brands and economic locations, employing the visual language of corporate identity to position themselves within a global marketplace. In the video work Europa (2016/2026), the tourism logos of European countries appear in alphabetical order as a slowly evolving sequence of black-and-white images projected onto a screen suspended between floor and ceiling with a deliberately minimal display structure. Detached from their advertising context and reduced to their graphic form, the logos become visual condensations of national identity, while exposing the remarkable uniformity underlying their claims to uniqueness and recognizability. Collecting is central to Fogarasi's artistic practice, a tendency that was already evident in his childhood. From this period dates a collection of cigarette lighters, mostly simple disposable models printed with advertisements, logos, landscape images, or humorous slogans. As a mass-produced everyday object, the lighter brings together a range of functions and meanings. At the same time, they refer to fire as one of humanity’s earliest sources of light. The artwork Lighter (2026) returns to this biographical point of origin. A BIC lighter—at once a utilitarian object, accessory, and collectible—is encased in a copper shell and kept alight. While the flame produces light, it slowly consumes itself, leaving only the empty plastic casing behind before the next lighter is inserted and ignited. In this sense, the work contains a lifelong collecting practice and a process of impermanence. In the series Nine Buildings, Stripped, first developed for the artist’s solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien in 2019, Fogarasi combines materials and surfaces from demolished or renovated buildings with those of the structures that replaced them. These sculptural portraits of specific sites combine different periods and architectural layers into a single composition. With Light Squares (2022), he furthers this line of inquiry. The sculpture juxtaposes two light sources of the same typology, produced roughly fifty years apart: a fluorescent ceiling fixture from the 1970s and a contemporary LED panel from the 2020s. Both are drawn from functional interiors typical of everyday and commercial architectural contexts. Stripped to their components, their understated forms take on the character of minimalist objects. By bringing together materials from different eras, Fogarasi constructs a condensed assemblage that renders technological, architectural, and social transformation. Together, the three artworks present distinct perspectives on the motif of light: as a medium of representation, as an elemental source of energy, and as a constituent element of the built environment. At the same time, they exemplify Fogarasi’s artistic method of gathering materials, images, and objects and reassembling them into constellations that are at once intuitive and carefully composed, rendering their historical, social, and cultural layers legible within a contemporary framework.