Ariel Helyes
Ariel Helyes
Plus VAT if applicable
Credit 4, 2021
Acrylic on paper
17 x 23.9 cm
About this work
Credit is an ongoing series, beginning in 2021, of appropriated images, executed as monochrome paintings on paper. In Ancient Greece, the Moirai, or Fates, famously used scissors to cut the thread of life. Just as the precise cut of the Moirai’s scissors didn’t bring death in themselves, but only spelled out the natural and unavoidable end of one’s journey, cuts of this nature remain a symbol of the inescapable. This tale takes on a range of new meanings in contemporary society. The gesture of cutting up a credit card, though finite in relation to that exact version of that object, is undercut by notions of resurrection and the indestructibility of capital. The cutting of a credit card is a ritual conducted mostly when a new card arrives. It is the act of shedding the snakeskin, a transfer of the ghostly bank account to a new physical container.
About Ariel Helyes
Ariel Helyes (b. 1992, Budapest, Hungary) is an artist based in London. He graduated from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2020. Recent shows include: Serving the People, New York, Fold Gallery, London, and Fitzrovia Gallery, London.
In his practice, Helyes addresses notions of freedom, work, and contemporary tendencies of esotericism in the public sphere. Drawing on the legacy of minimal art and appropriation, he explores these topics through videos and, more recently, objects and paintings that form a continuous set of conceptual, and visually and thematically distinct series.
Education
2018-2020 Royal College of Art, London, MA Painting
2012-2015 Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, BA Architecture
Selected Exhibitions
2020 BORN TODAY DEAD TODAY, Arebyte, London
2020 When Grasshoppers Make their Great Leaps, Tête Berlin
2020 50/50, Fold Gallery, London
2020 Beacon, Josh Lilley Gallery, London
2020 Attention Anticipation Anxiety Relief Release, Fitzrovia Gallery, London
2020 Snapshot, Hockney Gallery, London
2020 On-site, The Shopfront 286, London
2019 Nothing in that Drawer, 10 Hanover, London
2018 Crisis What Crisis Performance Festival, Patyolat, Budapest
2018 FLUX FIX, Eleven Blokk, Budapest
2017 Digital Sculpture, FKSE Gallery, Budapest
2017 Cross9 Prequel ‘Slime to Fill Blanks’, Art+Text Gallery, Budapest