Pinewood Photoshoot at Mátra / 2021
Together with the photographer duo Enikő Varai and Levente Kadar (Pinewood), the release of Istvan Dukai’s earliest works from the sterile context of the exhibition space is not merely an installation gesture, but a return to an original state. The works—reduced yet intense formsappearing on linen canvases dyed with tanning plants—do not represent nature here, but breathe back into it.
The canvas erected in a fog-covered field becomes at once image and object, presence and imprint. The damp air, the smell of the soil, the subtle movement of the surrounding vegetation do not function as a backdrop but as an active medium: the conceptual foundation of the works—their organic origin, the temporality and materiality of plant-based pigments—becomes perceptible. Nature does not illustrate; it writes back.
The distinctive, muted depth of colors extracted from tanning plants does not create a static surface on the canvas, but evokes a slow, almost biological process. These tones are not loud; they remember: they carry the former life of the plants, the gesture of extraction, the transformation of matter. Linen, as a support, further reinforces this connection—being itself of plant origin, the image not only depicts but materially belongs to the continuum of nature.
The photographs by Varai and Kadar play a mediating role in this process. They do not document in the traditional sense, but sensitize the viewer’s gaze: the compositions highlight the tension between sight and concept. Fog, as a visual filter, dissolves boundaries; the distinction between object and environment blurs, as if the works were dissolving back into the medium from which they originate.
This gesture—bringing the works outdoors—is thus not only a spatial relocation but a conceptual return. In this context, Dukai’s works can be read not as closed objects, but as processes: momentary states within the delicate balance between nature and human intervention. The images of the photographer duo are imprints of this condition—not endpoints, but transitions.
