Bornemisza Eszter

We report things, unanticipated by our readers, if they heard the word ‘quilt’ (what we generally know in Hungary as ‘patchwork’). It comes to mind, for the most part, bedspreads and pillows, sewn of square-cut colored pieces of textiles, measured out geometrically. “In Lyon, I visited a modern quilt exhibition, where I met an incredibly exciting abstract textile artwork. And I was allured by this world.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           .

“Freshly graduated as DSc, I worked as a researcher in mathematical statistics that time, analyzing answers to sensitive questions along investigations in sociology. After Lyon, my priority order changed. More than anything, modern quilts allured me. I was tremendously eager to do something. After two years, the jury has selected my work for an international exhibition.

I started to create my wall picture using collage technique. I aspired to reach the purity of the visual expression and the composition. Today, I more let my current intuitions to control me.

The figure wandering among old formulas of physics is my mother, a nuclear physicist. In my work I like to use maps, mathematical formulas, a Gauss curve, networks, and writing snippets. The mysterious letters, symbols, formulas mean more than their own. They carry cultural meanings, and even their forms are very beautiful as well.

Thinking first time on it in Egypt, I wished to understand the hieroglyphs. Then I came out if I wanted to understand they completely? It is exciting until I can only guess their meaning. Of course, I did not want to put any unacceptable text into my pictures. Therefore, I took the stunning, festoon-like texts in Georgian, Armenian, Thai, and Khmer from the translations of the Declaration of the Human Rights.

At first I only collected the textiles of interesting patterns. Today I am excited not from the treasures purchased at shops. For weeks, I am painting, varying hues, whitening, rusting, patching dyes: I make my materials alone. In such case I feel like at the high-school Phys/Chem laboratory practice on Friday.

There is a number of ways to fix the material and its form. Who would have thought that you could sew with wire? Knit using paper? Paint to newspaper? But you can meet not only these technical oddities. Our work is affected by experiments, while the color sets of the pictures need a rigid a mature esthetics with strong conceptual background.

Beyond the usual textiles I like the materials of special texture. The “bark cloth” is made of African tree bark. I myself cook paper pulp of rush and reed mace, producing a beautiful, unusual fiber material after casting or dripping.

“At a sale I purchased the entire stock of the basmati paper. After bleaching and washing, I could disaggregate it to fine files. In Korea compressed layers of these papers are used to make clothes because of its good water-repelling properties.”

“At a sale I purchased the entire stock of the basmati paper. After bleaching and washing, I could disaggregate it to fine files. In Korea compressed layers of these papers are used to make clothes because of its good water-repelling properties.”

Current exhibition: hillyerartspace.org

More information: bornemisza.com