Virag is a London-based Hungarian visual artist whose work focuses on innovative communication through visual design. She has seven years of extensive experience in the creative industries and works with a fusion of coding, digital editing and AI technology.
With multiple passions, she has tried out many roles throughout her life. Originally trained as a scenographer for theatre, and later as a production designer for film, she has worked on multiple film productions and at the Hungarian State Opera as a designer. Alongside this, she has also created various performance art pieces and installations.
“I was drawing and writing from an early age and couldn't decide which of these to pursue. I think that's why theatre came into my life and later film. When I moved to the UK, 5 years ago, I stopped writing completely. This is when image creation, as a way of communication, became more important for me”, she says.
Around three or four years ago, she started to learn visual effects and started to work in the VFX industry. This enabled her to learn more about creative technologies and that is how she discovered generative art, creative coding and machine-made drawings.
“My previous work experiences have greatly affected my creative practices. For instance, my experience with theatre and years of drawing by hand influence my composition and abstract thinking, whereas both film and visual effects have brought technology into my life. I think the ambivalence of my creative history is reflected through my recent works which contain something very contrasty, human and organic but also strict and machine-made at the same time”, she explains.
Virag classifies her work as both generative art and glitch art. There is always an element of randomised chance involved when developing them, as if she is building a dialogue between herself and the machine. Her work begins in a digital form on the computer, and her creative process is organic and spontaneous. She uses coding software to generate visuals and the final physical piece becomes either a digital print or plot print, and for the latter, she uses an AxiDraw writing and drawing machine, which is like a very simple robot originally designed to draw and/or write with pens and markers. In the past she has experimented with traditional printing techniques like lino printing and copperplate printing, and pen plotting could be considered a contemporary form of this. Every plot print contains a little unnevesses and the outcome highly depends on the reaction of the materials. Because of the nature of this technique, she enjoys the physical process of creating plot prints as opposed to purely digital work.
She has always been inspired by abstract art in every genre.
“I think communicating through symbols is something that's fundamentally very human. Geometry surrounds us and with mathematics we can literally describe everything. I believe my artworks contain something from the subconscious and behind their strict geometrical form they communicate something very feminine and organic.”
You can see her solo exhibition “Fragments” during the month of July at The Print House Gallery. Some of the prints are made by her pen plotter, whereas others are limited edition digital prints. Follow her at @me.and.my.robot.
