Anna Torma Istvan Zsako Balint Zsako

The Proposition Gallery is pleased to present The Needle, The Paintbrush and The Knife, a group show opening on Saturday, September 13th featuring textile works by Anna Torma, paintings by Istvan Zsako and collages by Balint Zsako. Mother, father and son, respectively, they are a family of artists creating works that explore complex narratives and tales of archetypal experience, subconsciously similar in themes like sex, mythology, society and bodily functions, albeit with each member utilizing a separate selection of materials.

Anna Torma’s works are wonderfully complicated silk and fabric collages assembled from a patchwork of old textile fragments, found fabrics, and clothing, which she combines with her collection of personal writings, texts from close acquaintances/familial sources, and visual fragments of well-remembered early experiences from her Hungarian upbringing. She translates the contemporary content of her hangings through traditional hand embroidery and finishes her works in the style of a traditional kantha quilt (a rural Indian embroidered hanging). Anna has exhibited her work throughout Canada, England, Hungary, France, the Netherlands and United States and her work is represented in numerous public collections.

Istvan Zsako is a sculptor and painter. For a long time he has made bronze sculptures of warriors, birds and goddesses, but recently his attention has shifted to exploring the medium of painting. Originally from Hungary, he lived in Italy and Germany before eventually immigrating to North America in 1989. Learning English has been a long and often comical process for him and with his new paintings he tries to sort out the relationships between image and word and all of the alchemical absurdist logic one finds in dissecting a new language. Istvan’s work has been exhibited throughout Hungary, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and Slovakia and his work is included in the public collection of multiple Hungarian museums, as well as the Hungarian Ministry of Culture.

Balint Zsako works in many media including drawing, photography and sculpture but for this exhibition he is showing his series of collages constructed from intricately cut reproductions of old master paintings. With these pieces he is attempting to create compositions that look like they could have been painted hundreds of years ago, but which at the same time are undeniably contemporary due to their narrative mix-ups and juxtapositions. His re-contextualizing of the source material immediately injects a contrast and humor not inherent to the traditional imagery. Previously, The Proposition has shown Balint’s watercolor and ink drawings; during Love Stories, his solo exhibition in March/April of 2007, as well as the summer group exhibition, Five Years, also in 2007.