Usually, the sweet smell of rotting apples is something our nose picks up immediately, but it is soon repelled by a haunting smell of death. This is the smell of ethylene, a poisonous gas that is released when fruit rots. Resonant with Keresztes is the fact that this gas is actually «contagious», such that If an apple begins to rot among healthy ones, the ethylene it releases will infect others. It is this notion of sweet-morbid closeness and togetherness that underlies the entire exhibition.

Which comes first, the apple blossom or the rotting of the fruit? We cannot be sure what is a beginning and what is an end. The apple, in its various states of metamorphosis – from blossom to fruit – is the central image in Keresztes’ latest work, deftly employing biblical, semantic, and cultural-historical associations with the fruit. Above all, though, the apple becomes a sweetly painful metaphor for femininity, maturity, and motherhood, which are invariably linked to the search for balance between pleasure and pain, self and other.

Keresztes’ work has always been restless, woven by inner conflicts and tension, especially when it comes to femininity and the relation to others. But this new body of work puts the notion of maturity and motherhood in focus and creates profound moments of reconciliation.
At the entrance to the exhibition, the god Janus in an apple incarnation greets vistors. Janus is the Roman god of beginnings and endings, entrances and exits, and gates. He is a god who guards the thresholds between worlds. In this placement at the entrance to the “garden,” Janus marks the transition from the everyday into a new, surreal dimension.