Gábor Kerekes – Over Roswell-2 | Paraphrase of Malevits Land

gelatin silver print on baryta paper
19 × 26 cm

After the death of Gábor Kerekes, his former Mamiya C330 camera came into the possession of the art collector Lajos László Barabás, who has since invited photographers to create new works using the camera. When I was asked to participate, it was clear that I would respond to one of Kerekes’s photographs, as his work continues to exert a decisive influence on me. My work Dead Light – Black Square (2024) provided the guiding direction for my paraphrase of Kerekes’s Malevits Land, which is conceptually and technically linked to the camera.
The image field in Kerekes’s photograph is divided into twelve square units, and exactly twelve 6×6 frames can be exposed on a roll of 120 film with the C330 camera. I pointed the camera toward the sky and exposed each frame for one second. For the sixth frame, I placed the lens cap on the camera so that no light reached the negative. After developing the film, I cut it into three sections and arranged them in a composition similar to Kerekes’s original, producing a contact print of the three columns.
Beyond the visual reference, the unexposed frame also alludes to the irreplaceable absence of Gábor Kerekes in the photographic community.

photo: Deim Balázs