Marton Perlaki

Lives and works in Paris, France

Artist statement

My work moves between photography, drawing, printmaking and darkroom processes. I think of these as separate disciplines, each with their own rules, limitations and possibilities. I’m not trying to make them look alike, or to create a single visual language that carries across everything I do. What I’m interested in is whether something can remain recognisably mine without needing to look the same. For me, the connection between the different mediums is more about sensibility than appearance. It is in the way I respond to an image, what I notice, the decisions I make, and the way I keep questioning or returning to something. Each medium gives me a different set of problems to work with, and I like that they don’t behave in the same way. A photograph might become the starting point for a drawing, and a drawing might send me back into the darkroom. One process can interrupt another, or make me see something differently. I’m interested in what is carried across between them, and what is lost or changed along the way. Humor is important in the work, but not as a way of making things feel lighter. It often sits quite close to unease, and sometimes I don’t really see where one ends and the other begins. I tend to rework images, sometimes moving them from one medium into another. I think this is partly a way of stopping them from becoming too settled. If an image starts to feel like it has arrived at one meaning, I want to disturb that. I might redraw it, print it again, change...

Artwork