This show presents 10 mixed media pieces of the New York based multidisciplinary artist, Anna Pasztor. Her work is abstract and inspired by everyday life and current events.
Even if she has a predisposition towards abstract forms of expression – as she is a former choreographer, many of her pieces have a narrative structure.
Four of the larger works were created during the previous presidency and they are creative reflections of some of the topics discussed widely at the time, such as misogyny and the separation of children.
The smaller pieces were created after the COVID pandemic started.
In April of 2020 she joined the NowNetArts LAB group. This group consisted mainly of musicians and sound artists. She provided visual materials during the group’s weekly public, live
presentations on Zoom. During these presentations she performed live painting and projected her videos. After the presentations ended, she continued painting the pieces, prolonging and transforming the original rhythms and textures that had generated the initial versions. That’s how the “Music Improvisation” series was born.
Artist Statement
I am a multidisciplinary artist currently working on mixed-media and interactive multimedia projects. I was born and raised in Budapest behind the Iron Curtain. My involvement in the arts started through theatre. As a former performer, I am never completely detached from my imaginary audience. At first, I have an analytical approach to narrative structures, an attitude originated by my academic studies in literature. However, I tend to express myself in a more abstract way by rhythms and textures – an obvious reminiscence of my former life as a choreographer. Living in different cultures increased my predilection for mixed forms of expression. I am constantly searching for my own artistic language that I find meaningful in the context I live in.
Theater gave me the key to understanding how to dissect human relationships. Dance helped me to come within reach of the abstract meaning of creative work and the infinite ways to present the human body. I have always been eclectic, enjoying, and mixing together apparently mismatching peoples, meals, music, and films finding in them the occult possibility, and secret longing for unification. I am seduced by the infinite possibilities of digital work. At the same time, I need to return to work in real space with real materials as I miss that sensory experience. Hence, my process goes through several artforms sometimes in the same project.
Being an immigrant, the “Other” since I left Budapest in 1991, has certainly influenced my vision about the human condition.
Anna Pasztor