Painting itself has been the central theme of ZSIGMOND KÁROLYI’s activities since the seventies. Disillusioned with the teaching practice of the Academy of Fine Arts, he tried to explore the basic elements of painting (space, picture plane, reflection, sign) himself in works inspired by Gábor Bódy, Miklós Erdély and Gyula Czimra. His photograph Easel of Czimra (1975) is a long-term loan from the Peter und Irene Stiftung, Aachen in the Ludwig Museum. Our collection includes his photographs entitled Straight Labyrinth (1977) and Chess-board Image (1978–79), which show his research into reflection and the contradictions between pictorial and real space. Point Line Image (3–2–1) is part of the so-called “Line Pattern” series from 1978, and is also the essence of the series. “Art is a by-product. An amorphous chipboard sorted from the scraps of a decorating workshop is the starting point. I put it on the wall as a picture. Objet trouve. The perimeter of the picture is the drawing. Option 1: I mark a point inside the contour, on the surface of the picture, purely for ‘aesthetic’ reasons. Then I drill a hole at this point and hang it on a nail in the wall, making the arbitrary pictorial, compositional centre of gravity an actual physical centre of gravity. [...] Gravity defines appearance. (Alternative way: find the real centre of gravity of the object and mark it.) [...] 2. Two nails in the wall: I fit a plate on them. The two nails thus become the circumferential point of the shape (while I move it: temporary, but still a permanent element). I fix the drawing by connecting the two points. (It will only stay in place if it continues below the ‘horizon’!) This horizontal line becomes almost vertical by replacing the prop with a suspension... – by letting go of one of the points.” Zsigmond Károlyi, 1978