The photo series entitled Front End includes camera-made images, reflecting on the transition between real and computer-generated visual environments through the representations of mock-ups evoking the visual associations of CGI technology, video games and 3D graphics.
Dávid Biró: Front End
Curated by Flóra Barkóczi
November 12 - 23, 2019
FKSE – Studio Gallery, Budapest
The recent works of Dávid Biró investigate human perception in the context of the technology-driven environment of our time. By employing the potentials of the medium of photography he aims to raise awareness on questioning and revising our visual experiences and rethinking the cognitive process of understanding images. Through his works, he aims to propose a new approach of interpreting the relationship between the photo and reality from an ontological perspective.
The photo series entitled Front End includes camera-made images, reflecting on the transition between real and computer-generated visual environments through the representations of mock-ups evoking the visual associations of CGI technology, video games and 3D graphics. The series intends to highlight the uncertainty of our visual interpretations. The scenery-like surfaces and the creative process behind them put the nature of visual representation into focus. Dávid Biró refers to the camera as a tool, that serves as the “prosthesis” of the eye, thereby enabling a deeper understanding of our reality. With the exhibited series, the artist aims to differentiate the notion of reality by questioning the authenticity of the photographic representation, evoking the manipulativeness of photo editing software and modelling virtual environments in an analogue way. These pictures operate as a simulation of virtuality – expanding the notion of "real virtuality” often used by Lev Manovich and Manuel Castells. Thereby reality gets connected with the illusion of surreality. By reversing the relation between reality and reproduction, the series gives a novel context to the critical perspectives on digital photography. It aims to emphasize the critique of our technology-driven and virtuality based daily life as well. However, the visitors’ interpretation also depends on their experiences with digital culture.
The series created in 2017 has been recently developed with new pieces. The resulting new series is publicly presented now for the first time, accompanied in the exhibition with site-specific elements. The blue light dominating the ceiling evokes the context of virtuality, while the spatial installation with columns aims to visualize data regarding our daily habits of (digital) image consumption. The programs organized around the exhibition aim to give further context to self-reflection and to generate new discourses on the complex relations of contemporary art and new digital technologies.
Flóra Barkóczi, curator
Dávid Biró is an artist based in Budapest, Hungary. He graduated from Photography BA at the University of Kaposvár and Photography MA at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME).
His main interest is the influence of the technical mediums on the human perception. He uses the camera as an extension of the human sight and tries to examine the concept of reality and knowledge. Biró tests human perception, especially the way we look at photographic images. His precise compositions evoke the aesthetics of the digital world in which he and his generation grew up, while he is also questioning the future of photography in a computer-driven society. He mostly works in a studio environment and seeks to unfold his conceptual ideas in a progressive form.
He was represented in several national and international exhibitions. He is part of the Futures photography platform and the finalist of the ING Unseen Talent Award 2018. In 2017 Biró won the Photography Scholarship of Association of Hungarian Photographers, the National Scholarship of Hungary in 2015-2016, the ON_AWARD grand prize of the OFF_Festival Bratislava Contemporary Photography Festival as a member of a group exhibition in 2014. He is a member of the Studio of Young Artists' Association and Studio of Young Photographers. Biró is represented by Trapéz Gallery, Budapest.
