Choreography of force

There is a form of memory that is not preserved in images, but in the body. It takes shape through repetition, effort and gestures repeated until they become almost instinctive. A memory of movement, rhythm, tension and force.

In Szilard Gaspar’s practice, this memory encounters matter. Boxing, sculpture and performance do not appear as separate disciplines, but as experiences that have accumulated within the same body. A body that knows force through exercise and contact, and that transforms this knowledge into gesture through its encounter with matter.

Matter, however, is not a mere support. It resists, yields, deforms and retains traces of the artist’s energy. Form thus emerges from the negotiation between impulse and response, between what the body proposes and what matter allows.

The resulting surfaces are not simply sculptural objects, but traces of an inter/action: the direction of a strike, the intensity of pressure, the rhythm of a sequence of movements. Photography fixes this process within a fraction of a second and captures the moment when energy passes from the body into matter and becomes form.

In Gaspar’s images, the body becomes simultaneously sculpture, drawing in space, instrument and material. The choreography of a boxing match meets the concentration of a sculptor facing material. Repetition does not reproduce the same gesture, but builds an embodied memory, an inner choreography that allows the body to continuously respond to the present.

The body thus becomes a living archive: it carries the past through learned and reactivated gestures, without repeating them identically. It does not only remember what it has done, but also how to do it.

In Choreography of Force, movement and stillness coexist. The photograph is static, yet it retains the energy, pressure and speed that preceded it. Force passes from the body into material, from material into image and, further, into the viewer’s experience.

The exhibition thus maps three facets of the same body - boxing, sculpture and performance - and follows the way energy circulates between experience, matter, image and perception.

Szilard Gaspar is a visual artist, sculptor and university lecturer. Born in Satu Mare, he lives and works in Cluj-Napoca. His practice begins with the relationship between body, energy, force and movement, deeply shaped by his experience as a former professional boxer. In his work, the energy produced through movement and physical gesture is transferred and discharged into the material or into space, turning action into a visible trace, a tension or a form. Sculpture, installation and performance thus become instruments through which he explores the relationship between control and impulse, discipline and instinct, resistance and vulnerability. For Gáspár, material is not merely a support but a participant in the process — the place where the energy of the action remains and continues to exist. His artistic and teaching activity develop in parallel, through exhibitions, projects and academic contexts in Romania and abroad.

His works have been presented in international exhibitions and projects, and his practice has been supported by grants and distinctions, among them the Constantin Brâncuși Scholarship and the Derkovits Gyula Scholarship. In 2025 he was shortlisted for the Esterházy Art Award.