Attila Csernik
In his book entitled “text” (Forum, Novi Sad, Serbia, 1985), Attila Csernik provides a precise genre definition of his verbo-visual explorations by segmenting them into several subgroups: 1) bad text, 2) experiment, 3) tele-text, 4) tele-video, 5) pro-text, 6) poetry, 7) intervention, 8) letrex, 9) ro-text, 10) alpha text, and 11) video text. And indeed, even more so than his fellow artists at the Bosch+Bosch group, Csernik persists with an artistic practice focused on words and letters. Moving consistently and systematically within a field that is largely homogeneous in terms of content, Csernik
explores possible ways of transcending the expected communicative functions of language, seeking to transpose it into purely visual qualities. His experiments with letters are an attempt at a conceptual rapprochement between concrete and visual poetry on the one hand and applied art (graphic design) and popular culture on the other. In the ex-Yugoslavian context, Csernik numbers among the founders of the practice of three-dimensional textuality where letter-signs and words, abandoning their traditional setting (paper/book), begin to function as self-referential and visual facts that are painstakingly designed in terms of their structure. The result of this game is that the artist’s body itself ultimately becomes his work—that is, a medium for displaying visual-poetical effects. Furthermore, Csernik’s art harbours an element of playfulness, of nonchalance—where decisions are made on the go and the roles of subject and object in art are relativised to such a degree that at some point they become one. He has also created unique artist’s books (book art), artistic objects, authorial films, performances, and works involving text where, following Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, he has explored the process by which—or, more concretely, sought to thematise the moment when the idea about/of a work of art comes to be. In Csernik’s oeuvre, this idea is articulated by thematising speculative engagement—that is, the act of thinking art: “move your left hand and at the same time register the visual perception of that sight” (“Visual sentences,” 1973). N.M.
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