Paris London Hong Kong is very pleased to present I Don’t Like Passion, an installation of new work by Halle-Leipzig-based artist Dagmar Varady.

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 prefixed 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. “This is precisely what I believe I have discovered in Louise Bourgeois’s work: that it is concerned not with passion but with the sober dissection of her emotions.” By choosing the title I Don’t Like Passion, Varady intends to avoid narrative or any particular allusive strategy. 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 process allows her to create and specifically structure her images, which in turn delivers something to her audience that resonates deeply. 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 from February 14 – May 17, 2015.

Dagmar Varady studied design at Burg Giebichenstein Academy of Arts and Design in Halle from 2001-03 and media art with specialization in inter-media at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. She has received fellowships and residency awards from the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart; Worklodge in New York; the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; HAP-Grieshaber-Award of VG Bild-Kunst in Bonn; Artist in Residence, Krems/Austria and Art Foundation of Saxony. She has also held lectureships at HKD Halle, Bauhaus Dessau, Universities of Dortmund and Cologne, and at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig.

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Tags: Chicago, Dagmar Varady, I Don't Like Passion, Paris London Hong Kong, West Town