Outputs
Hungarian artists
Introduction
Every now and then most of us contemplates on how the times behind us are layered on one another. Still, it is not enough to simply look at the flow of time as it is passing by: one has to see it as well. Historical boundaries such as 1848, 1867, 1919, 1945-48, 1956, 1989 have always been much more significant in the Hungarian historic and art concept then it could be uttered in such a humble writing. There is no doubt that the history of Hungary is full of drastical changes, still in the past 20 years we have enjoyed plenty of opportunities to connect with other nations not just like previously when we had only been able to adopt the art and mentality of some reputable countries such as Italy, Germany or Britain, but in a much more exposed manner we recently have connected with the rest of the world. So instead of radical changes in this past 20 years there has been a slow metamorphosis that is only truly visible for those who are aware of it. But
before we start talking about the present, let us pace back in time in order to find a point of reference from which the present can be interpreted at all for we should not pretend that the artists of our time are among us without any precedents. In fact most of the contemporary artists have chosen a technique the origins of which can be found in the past. Therefore copper engraving is not only a technique but a respected tradition as well. In 1947 Béla Hamvas and Katalin Kemény - two major characters of Hungarian literature published a book on fine arts the title of which was: The Revolution of Art. In this book the authors point out such significant shifts in art that are still measurable. That is why it is so important to mention it in this context- for it serves as a key to the door to the skies, without it we would merely be knocking on the hard wooden door to soemwhere less significant. At a certain point this book actually defines the
fundamental axiom of modern art, the basic idea of which is in the difference between 'reproductive and passive looking' and 'productive and creating seeing'. 'Sensualists are looking. The imaginative artist sees. According to most languages it is a lot more meaningful to see then only perceive with our senses. In English if one says 'I see' – they mean they understand. The Greek 'idein' is what we can find in 'idea' and it means seeing the essence of things'. Similarly the Sanskrit 'vidya' does not only mean perception and understanding but also mindfulness.' Therefore an artist should not only look but should see as well. And it is not enough to see but should be able to make others see too, and should definately be mindful. It might be a good idea to bear these in mind before one starts looking at these pictures. It is important to mention here that this collection of pictures is only to represent but a few on a very
wide spectrum and therefore is symbolic - an other buoy on the horizon of flowing time. Exactly for this reason my brief notes on the following pictures are entitled mostly to broaden the horizon of interpretation and not to tell about the life of the artists or purely comment on them. Something has changed around us Hungarians, Croatians, Polish, Romanians, Westerns and Easterns. Global changes reach everywhere and global patterns affect everyone should they live in a small Dalmatian island, in a Calcutta slum or in the city of Budapest. The Canadian video artist Mike Hoolboom pointed out in his essays ten years ago that there is an inflation in the number of pictures that results in the depreciation of the visual world. Whilst a Rembrandt is worth millons, a portrait of a family member barely has any value. Does the estimation of a picture correlate with its real value? The present and the future has a different numeric system. The question is
weather there is 'anything typical' that differentiates and characterises the art at present from 'modern' or 'postmodern' art. In these pictures social deconstruction and disappointment and the reaction to these diguised as inner harmony, technical finary, upgraded professional knowledge and above all global shock can equally be detected. What seems to be new for the people of today will certainly be considered as everyday in the future. It still is always art that is the most sensitive in reflecting on the real changes in the world and not economy or politics. Even if the topic is seemingly more related to mainstream modern, most Hungarian artists have comprehended that it is impossible to lie in art (as well) as it would immediately corrupt the result and existence as well. Therefore unlike postmodern theories artist and artifact are less devided here, while the individual and society, dissolving the ego in art, experiencing the personal
in the global are all represented as most important issues. Imagination for a graphic artist is crucial, therefore it is essential what they place in their centre of attention as it will dominate our common future.
Csaba György Borgo
Although for the first glimpse the world of Borgó seems like a cabbalistic and organic confusion, it is clear that symmetry, forms and shapes gather around a relentless axis. This ruthless axis is loosened by a peculiar Borgó humour from which the forms that are just about to be scattered start to look for their common centre or to be more profound are trying to organise themselves. As if a symbol would bear meaning just becouse it doesn't make sense anymore as a form becouse its original meaning has been forgotten. What used to be obvious to previous eras seem to be confusing for us even if we do understand the power of certain symbols. This Borgo-Cabbala is moving from the postmodern tradition of paraphrasing and reorganising towards an assumed centre.
Gyöngyi Gallusz
There is a deep, mysterious link between the handwoven textiles of Hungarian and North American Indian women that springs from the essential feminine and relates to the likeness of drapery and the ancient fibre of trees. As if the visible world would be nothing but layers and layers of one gigantic roll of textile as the Vedas say, this thick drape is hiding reality from us. Only female sensitivity is able to peep behind the dim texture woven by herself while men amused or bewitched by the sight are only musing in front of the picture.
Fatime Germán
The power of the distressing distinction between woman and angel. Is it really a woman? Or is it angelic? Is it a distinction or a relation? Fatime's lines are stronger borderlines then concrete walls are for mankind. Her drawing is like a very fine poem that knows exactly that it is enough to make believe, whisper, really it is much better to stay quiet even when we do say something and indeed it is of utmost importance to speak quietly if the poem is about life. There should not be an unnecessary line as it is impossible to draw everything, for the drawing itself is only part of the whole, too. Her drawing is the ultimate evidence for assuming an invisible world.
István Horkay
Postmodern passed by in the rage of the big remix and attractive emptiness. They did not aim for real paraphrasing-except a few- and certainly not for true emptying- again except but a few. Information technology provides enough opportunity for remixes but in the inner space a chair is on fire, the flames are flames of lust that burn both on the master's pictures and towards the desired woman. In the montage of Horkay the most attractive object is the window, that is though cut into half, there is a dissolving light from outside entering the chaotic iterior.
Kinga Horváth
The lines of the canyon lead into the eternal. One of the most difficult is to see the seemingly motionless erosion of stones and minerals, after all it is the invisible wind and all those other - now dead – rivers that are leading the hand of the drawer. She is becoming one with the never ending power of nature, she is connecting with the biggest power in her insecurity, she is following the lines of the most powerful tradition and the rawest energy and writes into the stone. It is both reassuring and frightening to see the lines of age on the face of the world, although our world is quite young, it is only ancient in the terms of the 'dreams of the one'. Should we be afraid of the flow of time or live every moment?
Rita Kesselyák
The world of the city night is vertically crossed by poles and horizontally by wires. Looking back on our way or on a different past so as not to collide, wait until the light turns to green so we can move on, not to suffer so much from the captivity of the moment. So we move on but we leave our traffic lights, mirrors, signs, pipelines just like our drawings, poems, sculptures, artifacts leaving us confused weather those who will follow will be able to use them or not? Will they understand the signs we leave behind? Will they find us or will they get lost too?
Ádám Lévai
Chimera is not only an antique infernal monster but also everything that can not be imagined as real, only as figments of endless imagination. In fact anything that exist in our imagination can be found as multiplied vision in hell too. This Chimera boat can be the horrible vision of escape too: when we do not have anywhere to go as what we should escape from is after all us-ourselves. Ther is no such place where there is no pollution, there is no such person who has not seen television. These thick lines are being built in the corpus of the drawing as walls of an organic labyrinth. The only way out is through the self.
Gábor György Nagy
His pictures are quite challenging for the first look: one can look at them for hours without realising what exactly is going on in them. Waves are the most difficult to describe when it comes to natural occurances. The waves of the sea, the surface of the lake, the splash of the stream. All of these are the big metaphores of existence. Still, the chain is billowing too in its rough reality and the movement ends in handcuffs. The house, the belongings, owning things are all part of being inprisoned in our lives, these are all links of the chain that torments the soul into materialistic existence instead of freedom, though it might as well conclude to such revelations as zen, the final silence of Japanese Budhism or tabula rasa. Behind these thick lines, behind the ever so muliplying individual patterns we presume there is genuinnes.
Gábor Nagy Pásztor
There are great self portrait painters who are truly original world reflection painters. Similarly there are great graphic artists who encrave their own visions as if they were world visions. Gábor Pásztor's uniqueness is also a reflection on his own era – an era which shows the viewers clumsy, false, thin or fat images like the magic mirror of the enchanted palace does. Pásztor's palace is an enterior decorated by deformed mirrors which make it easy for us to get lost and do their best to prevent us from finding ourselves, therefore it is always a challenge to step into it and look into but one of its mirrors.
Sándor Rácmolnár
The opennes, humour and irony of Ráczmolnár might make him symphatic straight away. Then one would start thinking weather this humour and irony is picking on graphics, modern life, science fiction or the viewer too? We might as well continue this list with the artist himself: is he laughing at himself too, does he dare being ironic with himself as well, just like with the major forerunners whose names he quotes? In a global world the words become logos and moods turn into brands. It is impossible to rule over emptiness without humour, new message cannot be found, consciuous cannot be ruled out without it.
Miklós András Sáros
Miklós András Sáros is dragging the faraway world of minerals and treebarks closer with such confidence that he can maintain the intimacy of this micro world and direct it toward the missing centre. This is the invisible centre, the axis toward which nature attracts like a magnet. It is not palpable, indepictable unless the beams of nature attract attention toward it. Or is it just a trunk? But where is it? What sort of space and what kind of forest is this?
Ábel Szabó
The night solitude of big city man is never so complete as in the dead time. Dead time is when we are over something but we are still not there. We have passed through midnight but dawn is still far away. Here we are standing in the middle of the night, deep down in the metro station. Everything that is dark and deep secures us while the red eyes of time is looking at the slow ticking of waiting. Dead time is burning the big city man where it is quite overtaxing to lead a life worth living.
Márton Takáts
Claudio Magris, the excellent writer from Triest mentions it somewhere in his book: Danube that only Budapestians would not be surprised at the apocalypse as they are already living in a post-apocalyptic city. There are more worlds, more times simultaneously. Márton Takáts is introducing this Budapest in his visions, he concludes an alliance with Rembrandt and Piranesi but his masterpieces are the visions of such a present-future that is already here. Present time cannot deal with such beautiful buildings and grand history. There are but a few wondering drawers in the picture aiming to encarve mankind, to preserve it for history, mankind who can stay human through and with art even in the apocalypse.
Zsófia Varga
It is not enough to draw, one has to see. Zsófi Varga is getting rid of the technical boundaries of drawing in Saint Anthony's pictures and from that springs a true, honest, animalistic and childish sensitivity. The viewer assumes that this sensitivity has always been there but it had to spring up through hard layers to be able to tell again that it is passion to create, not only to see but draw, and see maybe even ourselves in the sophisticated reflexion of visions. She is past herself but the big arrival is still to come, that is why her work is so important- they are true constants of this temporary time.
Csaba Zemlényi
Everything correlates with everything and all objects have their own fate. In between these objects there is an invisible line that connects them for us-people. These are peculiar objects that once had a lot in common in a story just like stars and planets on our birthday but solving this mystery is hardly possible. Still, there was something in common and the sense of this elevates them from among odds and ends and simply pretty objects. Not rubbish, not simpy forgotten objects but a relationship redifined by the artist. This is the love of objects. The terror of objects is only a few steps away: one might experience that the objects are actually separating us from what we really long for.
Italian artists
Cesare Garuti
To Cesare Garuti art has been for a long time an activity relegated to its spar time, since he worked as surveyor for 35 years. The passion for art led the artist, in his spare time to paint, producing a huge amount of drawings. Landscapes, still life and comics have been the main theme of its production during the early time of his art experience. After discovering the possibilities that the computer graphics offers, he dropped the pencil and went into the new direction of the Computer graphics. Since 1992, he carried on hundreds of CD images that he made. A dozen of these works was presented to the public in October 2002 at the fair office of the municipality of Milan under the title "From the pencil to the mouse experiments with computer graphics," in his first (and only since now ) "personal exposition". Finally, in 1997, he got retired and crowned the dream of a lifetime: to devote to painting. Since then he has participated in several group exhibitions and competitions. The absurd is astonishing. That's what the Cesare Garuti has intended to do, giving shape to a vivid hallucination that has the power to astonish people.
Erika Riehle
Erika Riehle, while also working the body as a pretext for poetry, with his work makes a sort of nomadism linguistic and existential uses the pretext of itinerancy, a voyeurism evoking the ambiguous attraction to Baudelaire for the modern city, in order to induce the viewer to a journey that actually uses the outside as a pretext to bring us back into the inner dimension in which everything originates and development. Dreams: they become an image of spaces of void conscience we all dream in visual images, mostly. Usually every person has the ability of create his onirical world, according to his own character traits, making it hard for other people to understand it. Every dream is different, there are no firm rules that can be applied to every single person, without distinction. The logic of dreams is independent from the well-known categories of space and time that we experience in our conscious lives. Nevertheless, it seems obvious that, in contradiction to what has just been said, certain dreams resemble other dreams and presumably more the same meaning. Sigmund Freud once wrote: " every dream has an unfathomable spot, as if it was a sort of bellybutton through which the dream is linked to the unknown!". The bellybutton shift from the periphery to the centre of the scene, swallows the image in a whirl, it erases every diaphragm, it clears every index threshold. This image has neither a way in nor a way out, but can we still consider it a dream?
Fabio Massimo Caruso
Traveling as a young man on ships visiting museums and galleries of contemporary art in foreign lands. He began painting early, but the artistic part officially in 1986. Participates in many group and solo exhibitions, his works are in private collections and in public spaces. Previously, he concurrently with the first period of painting, where he attended the studio of an artist Roman experience living in the area of private radio communications founding Punto Radio, one of the first Italian broadcasters and in public by collaborating with Radio Rai. Specializes in the field of graphic work for the Italian Post Office Philately Massimo Fabio Caruso represents the energy and the spirit that pervade him and motivate him, through his work "the time we live in". The states of mind and the socio-environmental changes are communicated by the artist through the representation of signs and geometries interwoven indifferent types of colours, that provide vibrant effects.
Guglielmo Alfarone
Guglielmo Alfarone loves to portrays the youth problems in contemporary society, giving rise to indifference, anger, terror. Great faces "portraits", scared, upset or angry. There's plenty of hope, courage and the will to live. So the essence and the symbols of life. Pregnant women, naked, waiting for the great dream of universal life. This work is a portrait that aim to express uneasiness of youth in our contemporary society, giving rise indifference, range, terror. The faces in the close-up, look alienated, scared, and indignant. The simplicity and the expressive of the faces are disturbed by the strong presence of the sign, abstract and furious.
Matteo Antonini
The choice of painting puppets is a artifice to create figures and situation that remind us of a lost innocence, still desired, with all the astonishment of a not yet defined identity. What we see is an astonished, inquisitive look, projected in a future that will soon be known. A wide close up look that never ceases to enquire, raising doubts, making at the same time the request for a consistent sound reality, that can be expected through a smooth and refined painting tecnique. There's an autobiographical research in what Matteo Antonini paints. The dream of a lost age, that is still alive and that is hard to leave behind, but not for this showing some grown-up features. This puppets are actually young man heading toward the unknown to exorcise the fear of the not-too-distant future, carrying their usual back pack on their backs. A transnational object that allows the passage to a desired, but not deeply wanted, maturity. For this reason Antonini's paintings can be defined "moving. The presence of absence, the need to shift between confidence and independence, the spaces given to game, the recurrent usage of symbolism through the "trinkets" of childhood that move fed our dreams since tender age. The catching aspect of antonini's paiting lies in the following statement: "I have played but now, that my play is over, I contemplate the empty of the existence.
Melissa Salvarani
Melissa Salvarani, obtained the diploma of artistic maturity and illustrator at the European Institute of Design in Milan. She has experience in the field of illustration advertising, digital and graphics industry. In 1993 she token part in the exhibition Sticker in Modena, in 1994 she token part in the Exhibition of Woodcut XXI of Carpi (MO) and 1997 she token part to the "A Book for Children" at the Book Fair in Bologna. Since 2001 she has taken part in exhibitions of artwork from local and cultural circles of Milan and Modena. Since 2000 she is responsible as well as digital illustration, including graphic design and fashion accessories under the brand fashion. A woman over-looking a shop window. Her femininity merges with the still mannequin, looking on her. We are what we wear.
Raffaele Tarallo
He is specialized in digital illustration, vector, in the realization of illustrations for t-shirts, in the design and layout of catalogs, brochures. He realized also: wallstickers, posters, flyers, invitations, logos and comics... I loves fantasy and this illustration of a winter-mood is as idealized representation of the "white lady that brings the winter-time".
Sara Pierotti
Sara Pierotti introduces almost simultaneously in her language a strong charge that allows graphics to address the printing of art through the representation of the artist's book. She is specializes in Visual Arts and Disciplines (GL graphics), alongside digital processing to the sign the way, searching for a speech made by a few essential colour and line dry. The image originates from the manipulation of a black & white picture, later filtered through the printing technique. The aim is to devoid the image of any unnecessary element that can divert the attention from the real subject. Marilyn standing in the backdrop that blinding light, with the unmistakable traits of a siluette that became a fashion icon in the XX century.
Taroni Mariacarla
Her designs come from a very personal vision of the world that surrounds her. Behind all her work lies a deep intellectualism process of study and research on the subject choice, which is the background to his creativity. Some works are original interpretation of the places she visited in his frequent travels. The immediacy and legibility of the representation arising from the will of establishing a direct relationship with the viewer, to send a message that can understand without problems. The artist took inspiration to the book "the Horla". The artwork is a representation of these sentences of the book: 25 May. ... I sleep - long - two or three hours - then a dream - no – one nightmare grabs. I feel for being in bed, I feel that I'm sleeping ... the I feel, and I know ... but I feel also that somebody approaches me, looks at me, I touches, salt on my bed, kneeling on my chest, I take his hands the neck and shaking ... shaking ... with all his strength to strangle me. I struggled, nailed by atrocious helplessness that paralyzes us in dreams, seek, panting and with great effort, to turn round, to reject this be crushing me and suffocating me ... I can not do!
Tosoni Marta
Marta Tosoni is specialized in illustration and incision. She got her specialization in these field attending the "Course of Engraving at the Blind Foundation of Betanzos, the "Course of illustration with Javier Zabala at the factory of Fables of Macerata" and the "Course of illustration in May June and July at the Association Artelier of Padua. of incision at the Association Kaus of Urbino. The illustration titled primates originates from the creative aim of narrating the life of gorillas through sinuous forms. They're part of a project that provides a series of "wild engravings" with bright colours that describe their background.
Valentina Garbagnati
The work of Valentina Garbagnati takes form of a poetic interpretation that finds in his work a new expression. "is the essence of man to move my path, that lives in people's heads, the side immaterial. Common thing in a silent look, a journey through the eyes to get in the mind. The fragility of the human being that is the basis of its existence" "Everyone is just the heart of the earth pierced by a ray of sunshine: evening and is immediately S. Quasimodo "and is immediately evening" Whatever is produced by the body is the elaboration of the soul. The body is the basic substance that was given to us. Everything else about it : the movements, the worn clothes, the length of the hair, the fingernails, the thinness, the fatness, what lives in the eyes etc... is choices, expression of a soul that leaves on its path real marks of its intangible existence.
Valeria Carbone
Valeria Carbone, enhancing the perspectives and figurative nuances, whose contents lead us to ponder on the technology of existence, of a conscience that bursts out in a chant to the heavens , elaborating iridescent thought, not to mention emotional translation, ideas and forties with the help of the spirit, of inner-qualities that provide the artist with the result of a series of commemorative elaborations. The artist tried to enhance those constants events that up-lift the human feeling and did it with an in-bred perception. Because silence to her, becomes the background music of a marry-go-round that keeps going round and round of a merry-go-round that keeps going-round and round. As an expert of pedagogical under educational methods, she enhance the sublime, conjuring symmetries of thoughts in an appropriate context, meant to shake the very memory of child-mood, but in a growing-up context. Valeria Carbone provokes the feeling of her artistic genius, between symbolisms and pictorial trends, a movement that etches a sort of essence and depth, touching on the boundaries of abstraction and the theology of men. Her hymns to joy, to freedom, to the strong heart-beat and the lyrical messages, make it so that the exaltation of the spirit is elevated to the power of an unlimited prayer.
Viviana Cangialosi
Viaviana Cangialosi is passionate of photography, theater, and cinema, the cirque, Balkans and Iyengar Yoga. She transfers these passions in her artistic work. Among her artistic field of work there is the realization of several backstage photography: the short film "Ice Scream", directed by Roberto De Feo and Vito Palumbo - 2009; events and performances of Teatro Sunil in Lugano (The Dock reviewed 09; show "Fog" at Theater du Crochetan Monthey-CH; over "the place of ' invisible "at the Teatro Dimitri in Verscio-CH - 2009); Masterclass school of theater at the Piccolo Teatro of Milan (2008 and 2009)," Il Sogno di Pinocchio ", performing the opening of the European Gymnastics at the Forum di Assago - directed by Lilia Haralampie (2009), "Construction on the New People's Theater" by Paolo Rossi in the magic box of Piccolo Teatro di Milano (2009); Puglia Night Parade 2008, "in turmoil", directed by Rossana Farinati - produzione Teatro Kismet Artworks - 2008, "The Lovers" by Goldoni, directed by F. Albanian - production "The Dovecote - Teatro Stabile di Innovazione" - 2007; "Cet Enfant", directed by Vincent Longuemare - Production Teatro Kismet Opera-2007; AkataBlu Jewels (2009); cooperative of street artists "The Farandula" (2007) ; Hotel Majesty (Bari) - 2006 / 7; exhibition "The mist s and colors" of the painter LeleLillo - 2006; Regina Gambatesa Jewelry - 2003.
The title of the selected work refers to a yoga technique called Vayu pratyharafrom the expansion of consciousness to the detachment from the world , through which the mind can be transcended. Starting with the idea that the tangible universe as we all known it's inconsistent, it's limited , it's unsubstantial. The parting from the physical experience we can perceive what lies beyond the illusion of the senses and than take a deep lock into ourselves, to seek a higher vision of life. "Life and dreams are like the pages of the same book: reading that pages is living, glancing through them is dreaming". Arthur Schopenhauer