Variations on the Self
2018-2022

Variations on the Self, 2018-2022, archival pigment prints on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta paper, Carrara marble, dimensions variable

Variations on the Self accompanies the path taken by a rock over time, namely its changes of identity. In a traditional sense identity change is discussed in relation to the course of life of humans thrown into existence and non-existence, their development and disappearance. The metamorphosis takes place in one direction and is irreversible, but self-identity, namely the continuity of personal identity itself can be followed throughout its individual stages, in the minute changes. In the course of the process, Ludwig Wittgenstein emerges temporarily. Wittgenstein has had the greatest impact on Tamás Dezső’s thinking and thus on his personal identity. As time passes and arrives at the last image the circle closes and the rock returns to the reduced version of its original form. The fragments broken from the rock while being carved are collected in buckets, bringing to mind the permanence of the material’s entirety.

The work is concerned with the philosophical problem of personal identity, namely the universal issue beyond the human. By pairing non-living substance and human identity the artist is examining the error deriving from the anthropocentric tradition of western philosophy, which proclaims that the notion of identity relates exclusively to human existence. In reality self-identity, coherence and continuity are all intrinsic laws which are valid for all forms of existence: human beings, animals, plants, objects and systems, or even a rock. Such an extension of the concept of autonomy reflects a far wider recognition of the complexity and convergence of life, matter and identity, which describes reality more precisely.

Variations on the Self, 2018-2022, archival pigment prints on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta paper, installation view: Foto Wien, Atelier Augarten, Vienna, Austria, 2022

“We like to imagine our identity as solid, constant and focused, like a core which practically stands opposite the world, the environment and nature, something which is significantly different from everything which is nonhuman and therefore it is obviously superior due to the mind and the ability of thinking. However this identity is purely a construction. Identity can rather be imagined as a temporal and spatial process, which permanently changes and even if we are not willing to take notice of, it is in interaction with everything it is closely bonded with and inseparable: with its world, with all the living and non-living which is not itself. There is no point whose permanence, immobility we could indicate.

Variations on the Self demonstrates the process-like nature of identity such that in photographs it renders the stations of carving and then disassembling the bust, and if we look at them thoughtfully the start and the end are the same. Thus we can see that the Self is not a single point, a single condition, but the totality of a temporal process from the moment of birth to death. It is a far richer, more living, variable and more open system that we imagine ourselves to be. The subject of Dezsö’s illustrative example, the model of the bust is Ludwig Wittgenstein, the sharpest and most radical critic and curtailer of the (empty) language and (false) constructions of western metaphysics.” Text by György Cséka, exhibition review, A mű, november 2022

Variations on the Self, 2018-2022, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta paper, detail

Variations on the Self, 2018-2022, archival pigment prints on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta paper, dimensions variable, the sculpture was created in collaboration with sculptor Gergő Ámmer

Variations on the Self, 2018-2022, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta paper, detail

Matter, 2018-2022, photograph taken of a 19th century Carrara marble microscope slide

Variations on the Self, 2018-2022, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta paper, detail

Variations on the Self, 2018-2022, Carrara marble, detail

Variations on the Self, 2018-2022, detail, found metal buckets, Carrara marble, installation view: Hypothesis: Everything is Leaf, Robert Capa Contemporary, Budapest, Hungary, 2022

Variations on the Self, 2018-2022, detail, Carrara marble

You can't construct clouds, 2018-2022, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta paper