Présentation
The soul of the world: although attributed to Plato, the idea already existed in older cultures. It refers to a force that permeates matter, giving form and function to its parts and its whole. It's about the assumption of an organising principle. This theory reappeared in the Renaissance and has remained with us ever since - from Paracelsus to Hegel to modern thought - as the focal point of debates on the order of things and the weight of contingencies.
In his latest multimedia project, Maté Bartha positions himself as a fictional observer, creating a universe of images, sounds and videos to uncover the hidden anatomy of the metropolis, an organism that escapes the governance of its creators to obey its own evolutionary principles. This organism can no longer be thought of in anthropocentric terms, but through the city's intrinsic grammar. Grid patterns and structures emerge among the images in the installation, like an allegory of humanity's efforts to create order out of chaos and to make sense of the arbitrariness that surrounds us.
Photography is the artist's main instrument for creating the image of a mysterious, timeless city, and simultaneously a device for searching out furtive links and invisible principles of organisation.