Balint Zsako

A few years ago, David Walsh asked Balint Zsako to paint him some paintings:

Hands are handy. If you want to open a twist-top bottle, masturbate, take a catch, shake hands (and catch COVID-19) or give someone a backhander, I recommend hands. If you want to scratch your bum or suck your thumb, I recommend hands. If you want to write (or type) an introduction, I recommend hands. If, on the other hand, you want to drink forty litres a minute, I recommend trunks (but only if you are an elephant). If someone is threatening to manhandle you and you want to beat a retreat, I recommend feet. Or you could form a fist and threaten a punch. It’s in your capable hands.

Hands have opposable thumbs. That’s what makes them hands. If they didn’t have opposable thumbs, hands would be paws. Or flippers. Or feet. They’d still be useful, but they wouldn’t be handy.

When I asked Balint Zsako to do some paintings for the even more limited edition of my limited edition book, he chose hands as the subject of his handiwork. Given his history, I thought he’d choose dicks and cunts (in fact, that’s why I asked him to do it), and I was initially a little bit disappointed. ‘Damn you, Balint,’ I thought, ‘sex is the great universal, and a major driver of this museum.’ Then I thought about reading the book, and I realised that it’d be tricky for a dick to turn a page, and it’d be well-nigh impossible for a cunt. ‘To turn a page you need hands,’ I thought, and Balint was redeemed.

Anyway, we own a whole heap of Balint’s watercolour and ink drawings, so we’re doing an exhibition. Not just of the hands, but a selection from the more than 340 works David has been collecting since before Mona opened, including original art from the picturebook-cum-odyssey of friendship Bunny & Tree. ‘I feel great pride that we are, in effect, becoming Balint’s archivist,’ said David, upon purchasing twenty-one volumes of his journals from 1995 to 2015. You’ll see those too, the exhibition being displayed—fittingly, for an archive—in Mona’s former library (our latter library opens soon), and housing a recreation of the artist’s studio. A space that serves as both testament to, and engine room for, work that draws upon timeless creation mythologies; recurring cycles of birth, growth and decay; the ever-presence of death within life; and sexuality as a generative, creative force.

Header image: Installation view, Untitled, from the series ‘Hands’, 2022, Balint Zsako
© Balint Zsako