Dagmar VaradyI Don’t Like Passion Dagmar Varady’s work is built from exquisite acts of research—finding the poetic in the physical sciences, excavating layered evidence, and collecting, ordering and documenting with sensitivity and care. She is continually forming elegant responses to what exists and what is inferred. For her first exhibition with PLHK, Varady has prefaced her project with “I don’t like passion,” a statement made by Louise Bourgeois as a way into a specific dialog with the artist and her work. Even though there are affinities between the two artists, Varady, like Bourgeois, regards a certain distance from her emotional world as essential to her practice. She wants to move away from biographical-emotional motifs, even if the beholder is in fact able to associate stories with the details and montages of her photographic images. In the resonating space of Louise Bourgeois’ work Varady is simultaneously recipient and creator. She experiences the effect on her feelings; thinking and action emerge from the work’s own energy, which she then dissects and disassembles. The work is an ongoing, living process of transmitting and receiving. Dagmar Varady belongs to the generation of artists working intensely on the borderline between art and science. This is represented by projects such as Sieben Synthetische Steine (Forschungsstätte für Frühromantik, Oberwiederstedt, 1999-03), Der Hai und das Mädchen (Fraunhoferinstitut WM, 2007-09), Wolkensimulator (LACIS, 2006), or Golden Faces (2005-08). “Questions that make artistic ways of perception or expression gain importance for scientific disciplines and vice versa, that allow minimizing existing differences or boundaries by common decisions and renegotiating values – such questions are fascinating to the imagination also from an artistic perspective.” (DV) The application of different media like hand drawing, photo and video, digital animation, and tapestry, is confronted by room related installations that correspond precisely with the respective contexts. This project is inspired by the exhibition “Louise Bourgeois. I Have Been to Hell and Back,” at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm that took place in 2015. | ![]() I Don't Like Passion, installation view | ![]() I Don't Like Passion, installation view | ![]() I Don't Like Passion, installation view | ![]() xxVARADY_April_2018_032 | ![]() I Don't Like Passion, installation view | ![]() I Don't Like Passion, installation view | ![]() Dagmar Varady | I Don't Like Passion | selected photographs on paper | 2017 | ![]() Dagmar Varady | I Don't Like Passion | 2017 | ![]() Dagmar Varady | I Don't Like Passion | selected photographs on paper | 2017 | ![]() Dagmar Varady | I Don't Like Passion | selected photographs on paper | 2017 |