Interview with Vera Molnar

with Vincent Baby

Since the end of the 1990s, Vincent Baby has been conducting a dialogue with Vera Molnár. He offers here a montage that allows the artist to look back on her work, to share anecdotes of her life and to comment on the critical reception of her work.

 

In this lively, funny and theoretical interview, we discover the spirit of an artist who, at the age of sixteen, informed her mother of her major decisions: to stop believing in God, to stop going to church, to stop playing the piano, to paint and to move to France. She tells of her collaboration with her husband, François Molnár, halfway between science and art, of her membership in the CRAV group (Centre de recherche d'art visuel, founded in 1960) and of how she began to work alone. With irony, she defines her practice as being at the crossroads of the "3 cons": the Con-crets (or Con-struits), the Con-ceptuals, the Com-puter. A pioneer of computer art, Vera Molnár has used in turn the laws of mathematics, an imaginary machine (a computer before the computer), and then the computer itself.

 

The whole is punctuated by several unpublished texts. In particular, she comments on some of her most striking series and helps us understand the density of a work intimately linked to the development of programs, allowing for an experimental practice proceeding by trial and error.

 

This book is available at the Oniris gallery in French or English version for 15€.

Aware Prize 2018
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