Mihai Toth | When Absence Becomes Presence. Untitled Drawings

Mihai Toth realized within the exhibition "Paul Neagu. Hyphen between then and now" a site-specific installation and performance. When Absence Becomes Presence continues the Untitled Drawings series, which discusses the area of intersection of two or more planes of space through spatial drawing. This type of artistic gestures aims at marking some marginal areas, apparently unnoticed, but which are part of the constant route of everyday life, for example the corner of a room. The present work, in addition to investigating the idea of the materiality of the drawing, but also the fragility and vulnerability of the point of intersection both physically and psychologically, explores how immaterial forms can develop a certain physicality in a given space. This approach is closely related to the doctoral research that Mihai Toth is developing, namely the articulation of "striking networks" inside the vacuum, an element approached as an intersection between two or more dimensions. Through the performance is discussed the use of the body as a tool in the representation and construction of this "striking network". The term "striking network" derives from the concept of "striking absence" elaborated by Paul Neagu, "a presence manifested through an absence". Through this performance, Mihai Toth makes a connection with another performative work from 2021, entitled Hyphen in Three Studies, which consists of a photographic triptych in which the body becomes a hyphen, an action in dialogue with Paul Neagu's series of Hyphen sculptures . The title of the work, When Absence Becomes Presence, is an adaptation of the title of the exhibition Live In Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form, organized by Harald Szeemann in 1969 at the Kunsthalle Bern.

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Mihai Toth (b.1990), PhD student of the Faculty of Arts and Design in Timișoara, with a thesis entitled The Void - Between Transcendence and Representation, uses in his practice the drawing, the object and the installation, approached as performative gestures. Between 2009 and 2015 he studied at the Faculty of Construction at the Politehnica University of Timișoara, where he defended his bachelor's thesis and dissertation about land surveying and cadastre, after which he began his studies at the Faculty of Arts and Design in Timișoara. Along the way he became concerned with entering into dialogue with various artistic practices, including: John Cage, Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman, Bruce Nauman, Hanne Darboven, Richard Tuttle and others. As part of his undergraduate work, Cratima – Graphic Conversion, he developed a dialogue with the Hyphen series created by Paul Neagu, through which he outlined a conceptual process of translation of an element of visual language, the line, taken from the three-dimensionality of the sculpture and transposed into a two-dimensional variant in graphic form.