The Budapest Diary Series

In the Budapest Diary serie Koós preserves and documents his surroundings by creating, literally, the imprints of his own, autonomous life. The series won “The Graphic of the Year” award in 2014, the (main?) prize of the XXVI Miskolc Graphic Triennial, and the Derkovits Fine Art Award.

With woodcut technique, Koós documents his everyday environment: the street where he lives, the courtyard of his house, and the metro car that takes him to his studio.

He places the print and the matrix together on opposing walls and creates an installation, a real-space experience. Showing the print and its matrix together reflects Koós’s approach to printmaking. Although woodcut is a reproductive technique, he strictly produces unique prints; that’s why the matrix and the print of the artwork (are exhibited together?) as one unit. Treating both the matrix and the print as unique and original objects reflects on the complex problematic of copy and original, which is inherent in any printmaking process.

The self-imposed restriction of making one single print of a matrix is also a statement, which contrasts the nature of printmaking and the unique nature of the artist’s valuable memories.

With the directness of the frottage print technique also used in the Budapest Diary series, the artist captures the ambivalence of feelings, which belong to the process of building an independent existence.

Koós’s frottage-printed objects, like his water- and gas-meter, become a symbol for paying bills, or the wall of the Hungarian Kunsthalle, where he exhibited his first award-winning artwork, becomes a memory of his first acknowledgement in art.