PERLAKI, Marton
The Third Hand
In The Third Hand, a cohesive and comprehensive document designed by OK-RM and published by InOtherWords, Marton Perlaki’s relentless search for new ways to make his work becomes the work itself. The book presents an inquiry: how can you give concrete form to a practice that is continually reconfiguring itself?
It is also rooted in time and space. It captures the five-year period from 2018 until 2023, during which time Perlaki moved from making figurative to abstract work. During this period, he worked primarily from a studio in Hackney Wick, London – a compact 40-square-metre space which, for him, presented a liminal space in which he could exist outside of the world at large. Within these four walls, Perlaki’s many-layered practice was repeatedly built up, deconstructed and built up again, a process guided by his constant investigation, production and refinement. Experiments with new ideas, photographic material, luminograms, sketches, snapshots and other ephemera were mounted upon the studio’s wall, juxtaposed and endlessly rearranged, generating new narratives and revealing new pathways. For Perlaki, this process was to become crucial to the work itself. The book serves as a filter for what happens within the practice.
The title, The Third Hand, refers to an unknown force which, for Perlaki, exerts a quiet but powerful influence over the act of making work. Chance, seductive and unknowable, dictates that even if a series of steps are followed in exactly the same way, the outcome will be different. This potent magic plays a crucial role within his process.
The book contains two essays. The first, Drawing in the Darkroom by Alex Bacon, delves into Perlaki’s process and the hinge moment which marked his shift from figurative to abstract imagery. The second, Fingery Eyes by Felix Bazalgette, considers the permeable boundary between seeing and feeling, and the role of the uncanny within the wider context of photographic history.
[publisher's note]
Published by InOtherWords, 2023
Photography
