Elemér by Marton Perlaki describes a world of chances and combinations, revolving around the manipulation of one central figure before his camera. We do not know who Elemér is – indeed, Perlaki suggests we do not need to know – and as we witness him moving and appearing before the camera he is sculpted, both gesturally and literally. His movements, in turn, elicit the witty, hallucinatory and strange from simple still lives, landscapes and portraits made in Perlaki’s native Hungary.

Perlaki began Elemér after starting to collect cigarette cards – the disposable objects of the early 20th century that contain on one side, a household tip, and on the other, an image. He describes how ‘On first glance, the images look silly and nonsensical, but when flipped over these pictograms suddenly make sense’. This flipping of the card continues throughout Elemér – birds, bubbles, bricks, potatoes and Elemér himself are broken from their contexts, they crash and collide with one another. Within this form of bricolage – this flipping of the cards – Perlaki brings out the absurd from the factual, the delicate from the concrete.

Marton Perlaki (1982, Budapest) is an artist with a background in cinematography and photojournalism. He co-founded Anglo-Hungarian biannual publication The Room in 2004 where he worked as a photo editor until 2015.