Reduction to a single form – the circle – forms the basis of my conceptual art. This elementary shape underlies my strictly composed paintings. Uniform in a square format, irritating patterns result, series of patterns that have their origin in variations of interconnected circles, almost overboard the frame. I call the basic structure "circle-net” from which different forms of joined circle segments arise. Their white outlines invoke empty spaces as if pointing to a distance that constitutes a sign of individuality of the almost identical elements of a painting.
I also perceive the circle symbolically in the figurative sense of Plato’s mythical whole round people (see below), that are cut in half by the gods and robbed of one half roam the earth looking for their loved counterparts. But also as a symbol of perfection that I keep fragmenting and reassembling.
Repeatedly reformatting and rethinking perfection inspired the development of a distinct system within dissected circles. The work process consists of the fragmentation of the circles followed by a two-dimensional visualization through metamorphosis of the original form. The basis structure of a painting is invariably the so-called circle net which is created through multiplying the original circle within a square. This multiplication process takes place on four levels. The propagation is variable and only restricted by the circumference of the square in which the circles are inscribed. (starting at 40x40cm up to 180x180cm).
Inspired by the fascinating fact that the secret of the pictoral scripts of the Maya and Egyptians haven’t been deciphered completely till today, I decided to create my own form-based script, my own hieroglyphs where the content of the picture determines the pictures itself. When I projected the Latin alphabet into the circle net, I succeeded in transforming circle segments into letters, to move the individual letters along the lines of the net at a whim, to arrange them above, below and side by side, shift them symmetrically or asymmetrically, to mirrow them, cover them up or just let them complement each other. The visual expression of the text pictures evolved into a no longer readable texture und gained a curios dynamic within the system of chance. Picturing the written word determines the picture itself. Language is reduced to speechlessness at (un)known associative Elements. New signs emerge, indecipherable hieroglyphs, which seem ordered at first, whose reading is subjective and variable, since the shown balances between the attributes "recognizable”, "similar to”, "strange” and "undefineable”. The individual letters form random enclosed areas that remind of archaic signs, faintly resemble fishes, birds, flowers and different abstract formations. These forms not only provoke a memory of the present but also remind us that we are living in an era where the borders – at least in our mind – between organic and artistic, nature and technology, art and science, object and abstraction are blurred.
An essential part of the artistic process consists of dissecting words and word fragments, but also real texts in their entirety such as the Lotus Sutra on virtual levels and re-visualizing them in a geometrical structure. Each letter floats on its own level and is only an isolated detail of a pattern of contradictory and complementary elements. Let’s call it perception pattern. Individual letters are abstractions of finiteness, words, sentences, the flow of text an abstraction of infinity. All this is only possible because of the existence of different languages. In this case, the language is the system, the letters are the order, lined up beside each other and hence filled with empirical sense, defined by grammar and isolated from the system environment, the picture background and the circle net. The relationship between the individual letters is indefinitely variable and not foreseeable. The letters change the painting and at the same time the visual system by creating a subtext within the original text. The new signs are variations of the no longer as text defined words. They are stripped of their semantic meaning and become indecipherable. They are mutating into a new script. Just like compact beings and thing disintegrate into patterns under the high magnification of a microscope, language is observed under such an extreme close-up that only its physical texture is perceptible. But the destruction of the uppermost language layer bares a new, deeper meaning, which only reveals itself when the habitual attachment of common meaning is overcome.
The working process from start to finished product is complex and time consuming. It consist of different phases: computeranimation of the letters residing within the circle net; creation of a work surface consisting of several levels; the search for new connections, borders and patterns; destroying the language level in order to visualize the formerly invisible; step-wise reduction of the many levels to a two-dimensional result.
I have been working on the circle concept, which represents the basis of my conceptual paintings, since 1996. Not only am I trying to develop it thematically but I am also working on perfecting the virtual background technically. I spend two years searching for form within the circle. The alphabet was finally developed in 1998 and since then I "write” my pictures, examining different topics, designing and painting in parallel. In 2001 I finished the big project "the seven prayers”. It consists of 7 prayers to the elements for which I transformed a whole chapter of the Lotus Sutra into visualized text. In 2002 I returned to the circle as my basic form and extended it into the circle wave in numerous variations. 2003 I revisited the "shadow” topic and inscribed the shadow between circle segments as well as within two-two colors. The pictures are defined through the "writing” and carry the title of their text. My complete portfolio is documented under www.studio-sandor.com
Apart from the "seven prayers” I don’t consider any of my thematic project finished, since every new emerging picture cries out for uncounted form variations. In addition to exploring a certain topic each series is characterized by a technical theme:

1997 circle in square – The beginning, pure search for form, circle segments within a square
1998-2001 the seven prayers – visualization of a text of the lotus sutra
1998 body in circle – human body, visualized through circles
1998 circle-in-scription – positive and negative forms of a text
1999 origami & signs – 9 sign (signs, hieroglyphs) divided into blocks
1999 in the black dimension – associations to a film negative
1999 4times mirror – 4fold mirrow image, the absolute symmetry
2000 virtual lovers – caleidoskop, the negative image (drawings)
2000/2004 twins – 2 variations with the same title, new forms through different use of the white border lines
2001-2003 shadows – 2fold mirrow images + reduction, visualisation of shadows within the context of 2 and 4 colors
2002 circle wave, like the first circle – the bisected circle (like yin and yang) transcending the single circle, creation of the circle wave
2005 between the lines – the symmetry of the painting is refracted through accentuating and separating the black-colored areas.
Texts: Birgit Schwaner, Regina Kirchweger

Plato
Symposium


Our nature in the past was not the same as now but of a different sort. First of all, the races of human beings were three, not two as now, male and female; for there was also a third race that shared in both, a race whose name still remains, though it itself has vanished. For at that time one race was androgynos, and in looks and name it combined both, the male as well as the female;..
..Secondly, the looks of each human being were as a whole round, with back and sides in a circle. And each had four arms, and legs equal in number to his arms, and two faces alike in all respects on a cylindrical neck, but there was one head for both faces they were set in opposite directions - and four ears, and two sets of genitals, and all the rest that one might conjecture from this. Each used to walk upright too, just as one does now, in whatever direction he wanted; and whenever he had the impulse to run fast, then just as tumblers with their legs straight out actually move around as they tumble in a circle, so did they, with their eight limbs as supports, quickly move in a circle. It is for this reason that the races were three and of this sort: because the male was in origin the offspring of the sun; the female, of the earth; and the race that shared in both, of the moon - since the moon also shares in both..
..Now, they were awesome in their strength and robustness, and they had great and proud thoughts, so they made an attempt on the gods..
..Then Zeus and the other gods delibrated as to what they should do with them. And they were long perplexed..
..Then Zeus thought hard and says, "In my own opinion," he said, "I have a device whereby human beings would continue to exist and at the same time, having become weaker, would stop their licentiousness. I shall now cut each of them in two," he said; "and they will be both weaker and more useful to us through the increase in their numbers. And they will walk upright on two legs"
.. As soon as he said this he began to cut human beings in two, just like those who cut sorb-apples in preparation for pickling, or those who cut eggs with hairs.. When its nature was cut in two, each - desiring its own half - came together;
..and whenever one of the halves did die and the other was left, the one that was left tried to seek out another and entangle itself with that, whether it met the half of the whole woman - and that is what we now call a woman - or of a man; and so they continued to perish.. Each of us, then, is a token of a human being, because we are sliced like fillets of sole, two out of one; and so each is always in search of his own token..