NO SHOW MUSEUM

* 1937 in Sümeg, Hungary. Works and lives in Cologne, Germany

Hungarian artist

Known for: Mail art projects, Stamping actions

Art historical context: ZERO group, Fluxus, Conceptual art, Mail art  

Endre Tót is a conceptual and performance artist, known mainly through his mail art and stamping projects. In 1971, he gave up painting and declared a zero state. For the rest of his career, he devoted himself to the exploration of nothing. Since then, absence, disappearance, and non-existence are recurring themes in his work. Nothing is often visualized in Tót's works by the word "zero" or the number zero. His Absent Pictures (1974) consist of works by famous artists or press photos of prominent events that are replaced by black, blank, or cut surfaces with identical dimensions. The "aesthetics of absence" is even clearer in his Blackout Paintings (since 1989). In the deep black areas, each surrounded by an ornamental border, the absence is complete. There is no recognizable subject or underlying theme. In addition to extinction or eradication, the word "blackout" implies associations with fainting, unconsciousness and censorship. The titles of his two retrospectives (Semmi Sem Semmi [Nothing Ain't Nothing], Kunsthalle Fridericianum Kassel, 1995; and Ki fél ein semmitől [Who's afraid of nothing?], Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 1999) both refer to his artistic program of depicting absence/nothingness.  

Exhibited works