Artwork details - EVN Sammlung

The Maelström-Project
Attila Csörgő

aluminium vessel, electric motor and motor oil
57 × 57 × 60 cm
1995

Acquisition 1998
Inv. No. 0050

The sculpture Maelström has no fixed form. As with a fun-fair attraction, it only comes to life when one pushes the button and sets it going. Attila Csörgö is a tinkerer with a propensity for physical paradoxes and optical illusions; one who searches for astonishing – and astonishingly simple – demonstrations and illusion pictures. In the Maelström Project, motor oil is set rotating by means of a motor which simultaneously serves as the base for an aluminium vessel holding the oil. The heavy, black, shiny liquid forms a reflective surface that bends more and more inwards, like a parabolic mirror. From the moment the motor is switched on and until it reaches its maximum speed, the curve changes continuously, the hollow space gaining in depth. Due to the continuous change of proportion, the reflection of the room undergoes drastic alteration.

The title of the interactive and variable sculpture is derived from a horror story by Edgar Allen Poe. In “A Descent into the Maelström”, there is a description of a gigantic whirlpool that sucks everything down into its depths. Poe imagined a “smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round”. Attila Csörgö constructed a series of experiments showing with what simple physical means a state can be created which leads into a zone of fantastic transformation. If one gazes into the continuouslyaccelerating, rotating mirror of oil, then one can be caught up in a state of sensual destabilisation – if only for a few moments.

Wolfgang Kos, 2005 (translation: Tim Sharp)