Light as Creative Medium

Attila Csáji is the first Hungarian artist who reached the most radical level of painting, having started to create monochrome paintings. His early works are parallel to the aims of Zero Group from Germany. Since the end of the 1970s Csáji dealt with the different branches of light art, investigating the material and physical appearance of light, utilising the image creating abilities of “bodiless light” in his works. Light art was born in the 20th-century, following the appearance of innovations in technology: the appearance of laser, holographic 10 representation enabled by coherence, different optical possibilities, the possibility of depicting movement all supported the flourishing of this field of art.

For a long time it is a mutual issue for science and art to understand the nature and the effects of light, as well as to explore the possibilities of use thereof—including aesthetic use. For this reason the central role of light is experienced throughout the history of art. The deep interest of artists towards light as electromagnetic radiation can presumably be drawn back to the drastically changing discoveries in physics at the ent of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries.

Attila Csáji is a painter, printmaker, light and hoglograpgy artist. Among his mentors we can find László Moholy-Nagy, closely connected to George Kepes, therefore his exhibition is worthy to be exhibited in the Kepes Institute, in Eger. He has been creating images with the use of light since the second half of the 1960s. Using the coherence of laser light he invented his so-called pre-holographic or super-positional method, which was proved to be unique internationally. Attila Csáji’s exhibition explores the internal contexts and perspectives of his colourful oeuvre, within the form creating will and the scientific activity.