Elke Varga, Sight Unseen, bubble jet photocopies, 1995

after exhaustive excavation, the archaeologist declared it a primitive ruin of some sort but could not elaborate no further.
a researcher into extraterrestrial life added that no human could possibly have constructed such a monument.
the theologian tried to go over both their heads & insisted that it belonged to "the Being who rules above clouds".

yes, i know, i said wearily. i understand. i believe.

& yet
here, in a space of its own, between surface & nowhere. . .
frozen liquid patterns offer little support to argument, reason, belief.

the depth is more a gulf (so far the distance between us) where each instant evokes a response, for me a score with a single directive: "tacet".

Our Galaxy

'Star' is not only a name that gives form to an explosion but a noun for light in slow-motion & out there in space, things happen in the slowest motion imaginable. 'Star' stands in for light expanding into infinity, a distant curl of flame coming towards me.

d j huppatz "Star Touchers"

Our galaxy is held together by forces of attraction or acceleration, separated from any other galaxy by great areas of space. A fuzzy aggregate composed of light from dying suns, perhaps some are already dead. But then there is the space inbetween, the dark plane upon which we draw contours. This is the hardest space to articulate: beyond "between the lights", the blackness that throws everything in question. Perhaps acceleration is the answer, moving through all the possible answers . .

What do you mean they have no names? Am I supposed to make up a name for each star? Where is Sagittarius, Taurus, Libra? How shall I arrange them?

Attraction: being drawn to an image. Elke Varga presents a series of images that draw the viewer into their own spaces. Yet one gets the impression that these are fragments of an unseen whole, that each image provides passage into the same virtual space, an anonymous, third person space. Virtual, but no less real than any other: our galaxy. Varga presents an image of our galaxy that is magnified then shrunk or, alternatively, a microscopic fragment enlarged. She erases all reference to known images & in that erasure creates a new reference, a new constellation of things. No one ever saw the original. Perhaps there never was one.

Brillaint radiance emanating, they die stillborn, like sparks whose rapid obliteration the eye can scarcely trace upon the burnt paper. Out here in the dense regions, the folds of time so close together it has all but stopped. The ebb & flow of existence where I am lost in vacancy seems a cold isloation & yet your heat passes through me as a wrinkling waves . . .

d j huppatz "Star Touchers"

Elke Varga does not use the photocopier as an instrument of capture. There is nothing to capture. How can one capture acceleration? Or the light of long dead suns? Light cannot be arrested or owned. Varga's art of capture is not about possessing, or even about arresting movement. It is a process of slowing down to see things differently, a process of reflection.

Shooting laser beams at pieces of paper sounds harmless enough. It's more dangerous than it sounds though. A risky business. Who know what might be produced? The title "Sight unseen" evokes risk. In leaving objects to the machine, an element of indeterminacy creeps in, throwing art open to chance. Objectively, the machine sees more than the naked eye, only the machine sees the object. But this exhibition is not about objects. It's about possibilities. For Varga, there is no object, the starting point is somewhere else. Her art is a creative dissection of our galaxy. It makes no sense until we join her out there. Freedom is necessarily shared.

danny huppatz
Melbourne

Ekle Varga's work was produced by a canon bubble jet copier

Elke Varga, Sight Unseen, bubble jet photocopies, 1995