“Being a small schoolboy, I was a fan of Indian/Wild West stories, even organized an Indian tribe. The teacher, having an excellent pedagogical sense, tried to revert my attention to the school objects and one day she asked: Do you know where the Wizard of the Rocky Mountains lives? Quite excited, in the afternoon I went to the given address.

After the ringing -even now I hear the shuffling as closes-, the door opened and there was the painter Ferenc Zajthi with a huge beard. Whom are you looking for? – he asked. The Wizard of the Rocky Mountains – I replied in astonishment. He entered the studio with a smile. I’m a painter as well – I said encouraged. He answered: Sit down and draw something, young man! This was the beginning.” Without exaggeration, we found as well our Wizard of the Rocky Mountains. We walk in mythic light-environment, ancient cave paintings came to life in the dark, flying across a nebula painted with light, we enjoy a cathartic experience inside a Trinitarian Abbey…

….the story continues with a ten-metre-high candle slowly burning down, but, building back in the darkness, it lights again, heralding: the life is eternal! This procedure was a part of the daily life of the downtown Copenhagen for three months. The symbolic flaming of the candle means light and reason, and it proclaims the memory. Candle and Lux: well, we are at physics.

The light-art is a compound of the poetic fantasy, the scientific research, and the engineering precision. The optoelectronic revolution needed to be added. Starting from the seventies, the international scientific literature of the laser technology and holography contains not only the names of László Moholy-Nagy, Dénes Gábor, Gyorgy Kepes (of MIT) but of Norbert Kroó and our host as well. The method of superposition is an international trademark. Supported by strong laser technology, nearly 300 objects were produced till now.

Due to the laser, the cooperation of artists, physicists, and electic engineers provides us new possibilities of visual expressions: here are the light performances and the holograms.

Another surprise: the staircase was built of the excess stones of the Budapest Basilica. It was legal that time. A part of the studio leads us to the future, the other back to the past. In the middle: cacti, they are enduring the direct sunlight coming down from the roof window. Remaining at ancient legends, we start to see the pictures with the objects investigating the runic writing.

We learn novel and great things about the light, when talking on coloured plastic chips and enamel paints.

The “Signal Bars”: a strange coded message, perhaps from the Present to the Future. the multicomponent material, covered by special stains, is causing a unique, iconic effect. The mixed paints, the light-reflecting metal colours, the low-angle illumination of engineered inclination give a new meaning to the artistic pleasure.

The barbaric island, Aru-Adu: is it myth or reality? It is not importat at all. The moral of the story is impressive: the island accepts the well-intetioned people while it becomes unvisible for the bad ones.

Alas, the 20th century made a fetish of innovation, while the profit chase and the narrowed emotions caused uninspireless. There is no problem with the avant-garde tendencies, because there are many questions to be raised again and again, and the world need always be reinterpreted. Incorporating the scientific achievements into the arts, and the cutting-edge technology help to redefine the very elementary possibility of the expression: the line. Using linear drawings we can reach the beginning of the time, getting new possibilities of vistas.

The light-painting is a technical art. We hope the time is not far when the laser will be a part of our life, to project peculiar worlds for ourselves, and we can intimate our inner transcendental desire, the desire to return back to the time when it was natural the faith and the magic.

7/6/2011 Budapest

The majority of people certainly imagines that a real studio is at the upper end of a spiral staircase, and, at a strait garret, there is a bearded painter, cap on his head, one hand holding a palette, a brush in the other hand, he is full of paint, and just going to die of hunger. In this case, only the spiral staircase and the garret are true. “ I do look like everyone on the street, using no palette, holding the brush in one hand, a rag in the other. And my little table for the paints has rolling legs, just for kicking it away if I paint a three-meter canvas.” This painting technique was applied during the Renaissance. He paints many subtle layers to each other; sometimes the paint is thick to show the pressure of the brush. Then he deletes back it with rag.

“I went to the practice-teaching elementary school of the University. At the window, the children of wealthy families, being brought from the garden districts by car, at middle the super talented ones, at left and back we, of the near-district. It quickly turned out that I could draw everything. I wondered why the others did not see and know what I was able. I won the national drawing contest, so I was admitted to the Art and Craft High School. I was interested in nothing but the drawing, the waist-length hair, playing guitar and sport. At 16, everything changed, I settled down, being affected by the smell of the flax and the turpentine.

“For a company jubilee event in Germany, recently graduated painters were invited from several countries. I was selected from Hungary. Unpacking my pictures, the general manager was disappointed. “What you brought is not politically correct. You will not sell any” – he said in 1993. I got a room, appended my pictures, and, hoping no sale, I gave a very high price. And I sat sullenly in a corner. “

“Suddenly, the boss’s wife broke into with her guests. ‘What are these gremlins?’ – they screamed. I said wearily: ‘You can stroke them, they will not hurt you only if I’m here.‘ More than half of my pictures were sold.”

What makes a good picture? How do we know that we found the right one? “If I get a shivering attack seeing it. Stepping in an exhibition room, I immediately feel it. It helps if we know that the artist put his best work on the front page of invitation. Or, what he does not want to sell. The expert collector is waiting for the main works, anyhow.”

“I do not know in advance what subject I am going to paint. Before the frost, I found a sprig of fragrant roses in the garden. I put it in a glass of water. Then I noticed the merged, strange shadow of the transparent glass and the flower, illuminated by the infiltrating light. This light-and shadow sight generated a still life series. One picture leads to another.”

“When I was young I dreamed a lot, having recurrent dreams. Walking in familiar landscapes, I knew which way to turn at the end of the street. I often dreamed of water and ships disappearing in mist. “

“One night, loitering in the darkness, I passed in front of the mirror. As I saw my face in the dim light, I imagined the feeling if once you, almost in a daze, met your portrait. These heads here like fingerprints from afar.”

The ‘black rococo puppets’ are connected to my adolescent experience. “ When I had to write an essay on the Rococo, I hit upon the paintings of Antoine Watteau. These were like tiny dollhouses, beautifully painted, but the figures, all dressed in frills reflected no easiness. When I got first into the Louvre, I could not find any picture of him, even after long wandering. Only when I went to the lavatory, I alighted on three small paintings of him by the door. I was shocked that they treat this great artist such a way. For me, to whom Jimi Hendrix means the life, it was a shocking realization. I have never met this grade of sadness.”

“I wanted to be a racing driver. My aunt said I had to be a shop assistant, but the family voted against: I was too thin. My mother took me to the printing office, but they needed typesetters only. It was no good as well, for you get sick lungs of lead. The printer suggested trying the Arts and Craft High School. It turned out that the term began, but I could take an extra entry test.

“After the war, the best artists came there to teach. The school had a good atmosphere, we were friends supporting each other.”

“We needed no looking for orders. Before a film was introduced at the movies, the state-owned film company called us to create a poster. In downtown Budapest, there was a small screening room, where we can see the film helped by an interpreter. It was all left up to us. They had a say in the matter if the money was limited: make two-colour prints!

We made a lot of posters. The printers did not care about anything. The paint was flowing on the floor, they printed on second-hand paper, using the back of the sheet. Only political posters were made of better quality.

Computers killed the graphic art. I designed a wine label for a famous winemaker. He liked my design, but the printer did not accept my colour separations, asking digital bitmap files. So I broke with drawing, and retired.

You need always to do something. I make my sculptures of packing material of household appliances. To carve this stuff is not a pleasant work, but I can do at my desk. I do it for myself, and I enjoy it.

My statues have a Chinese influence. I like the Chinese literature. It is genial, structurally differs from the European one. I watch Chinese channels on the TV, even if I don’t understand the text. Western people do not pay attention to human values, being interested in the money.

You always have to deal with what the time dictates. I am a real picture-addict, just taking photos. I am shooting the women from magazines, seeking mainly historical characters. I have got a computer from my son, storing my pictures to there. The good photo contains the soul, so it is human and authentic

People project their egos unconsciously. They think they alter changing something. But the soul cannot be changed, because the soul comes of the ancestors, of the family. For example, every child of today knows that he lives badly. For his environment tells it to him.

“That time my father was expelled from Czechoslovakia, because he identified himself as ethnic Hungarian. We had nothing at home. We received an emergency flat of 5×5 m size, in a freaky yard of the Main Street. It was totally empty. There was a hole in the wall for the flue. We went to shop to the nearest grocery. They even used a tipper balance, also giving credits. I was a small kid, knowing Hungarian a little. But our parents never told us that we are living badly.”

The nice afternoon is filled with contemplation. Do you need to accept anything what the well-paid scientists say, just for they have a good brain? Is the art a bunkum really? How the human taste can change? May you paint icons just for fun?

“People do not deal with the basic things. There are two things you may not know where to be: the soul and the God. When Moses arrived to the mountain of God, he asked God what to say to the people, who he is? What is his name? He answered: ‘I am who is’ “

14/4/2013 Budapest

In a top floor studio, who would not want to sip coffee while Yves Montand’s songs and Ernő Weszely’s accordion music produce the Paris feeling? What is more: the scene is above the downtown Budapest. Another time while some mediaeval music sounds, around us there are colorful pastels depicting modern unicorns and we just talk on common-day issues: we both love fried spare rib sliced thin rich with crispy salad?

Or do you like to have a tea? You can choose a blend from the shelf decorated with lace. Fine antique pieces. If you are lucky, tea will be served in an Antwerp cup, and when some honey drips to your cup, you can hear the strange story of these blue-white porcelains. Then we talk on the Flemish people, who cover every spot with stone blocks because of much raining. The geometric floor tiles accentuate the beautiful waves of the draperies and the soft movements of the female figures. Meanwhile scented candles are ignited and fine biscuits are crunched. This is an afternoon above the Budapest roofs, eclectic spires around.

“I am proud of my Jász roots. ‘Jász’ is the name of an ethnic group, living in Hungary, originally ‘Alans’, kin to Iranians. They were craftsmen and farmers; their strong wives participated in the house management.” At the reign of Empress Maria Theresia they formed a league, collecting enough money to redeem themselves from the services of the German Knight Order (“redemption”, 1745).

“I attended the last artist’s class of the High School of Arts. The old Sándor Basilides brought the nicest model. I can draw from dawn to night. Still today drawing is my love. Looking at the paper with feverish excitement, something grabs me. My hand starts to move the pencil, the pastel, or the brush. When I am ready, I get curious. I had fantastic masters. Once upon a time Master Barcsay coached me up, because I did not finished a full-length nude. Later he offered excuses, for he did not want to offend me. He, the dear old bachelor, was a wonderful person and a good teacher. He taught anatomy.”

“It is important to me that I am a woman. I did not miss anything important in the life. I work as an artist, but my family, the motherhood, and my partner are important for me. I depict the woman living my feminity. I can gain themes from the life of so many women, a delicate lady living among laces, a city neighbour, elderly village woman, or a successful artistess, whose beauty hides her bitterness. Closing my eyes I see them when I just want. Their tales appear in my pictures. Sorry, the artist takes advantage of the human spiritual life.”

“It is not accidental that hands and feet are accented on my pictures. The artist is able to read from these as from the face. I like the bony, knobbly hands. Mine was so even in my young age. I am not a fashionable artist, I cannot adapt myself to the trendies. I prefer more the classic and Dutch culture. What does it mean? I pay attention to have a main theme, and only this be having the accent. The rest is just a tool to perfect the sight. The emotions must surmount to the visual composition. I do believe that the authentic art comes from our personality. By the way, do you want some cake more?”

17/11/2010 Budapest

Életrajz és elérhetőség:

keri-decsi.hu

In my childhood the reality was so important to me, that I had a diary, and I tried to illustrate my adventures as climbing down to cellars, investigating cock-lofts, swarming up to cliffs, crossing rivers. Maybe this was the first step to my artistic career.                                                                                                                                                .

Having been a teenager, I was impressed by the interiors, decorations, icon paintings of the Szentendre churches, so I made antiquity-looking objects.

Although I never wanted to be a painter, later, having met the history of the ‘modern’ painting, I started to paint using the styles of my preferred grandmasters (Monet, van Gogh, Paul Klee, René Magritte, Dali, Marcel Duchamp, Lajos Vajda). I created ‘Edwinist’ pictures (Edwinism: wind-blown flag when the wind is not blowing). I met László feLugossy, who was thinking about the things just as me, turning into my creative partner for many years.

In 1968 we jointly displayed our pictures on the wall of the castle hill, Szentendre. We created the first outdoor exhibition, repeating the event on the first October Sunday of each year for ten years. This event attracted there many self-taught artists (painters, sculptors, musicians, writers and poets), some of them moved to Szentendre. As a result, the Lajos Vajda Studio was established there later.

In the summer of 1969 I organized a performance-type show named ‘Nalaya Happening’ to commemorate the ‘entering of an idea to the lock-hospital’. The ‘idea’ was feLugossy, who escaped from the compulsory military service using the method of beer and sedatives. I, as a young Dadaist that time, reckoned all of my acts and gestures to a work of art, so it was matter-of-course on my part to respond to this case as well.

The proposed twenty-minute presentation returned to a police action, ended in a six-month remandment. The totally innocent performance, born in the spirit of the Dadaism, was transformed into a ‘premeditated vandalism in group’, thanks to the nightmarish schizophrenia of the given historical era (1970). Of the participants ten were sentenced.

This event made domestic sensation, even the foreign press dealt with it. We became a political issue, involuntary resilients. We realized that there is a cultural politics. So far, I did not even think to ask permission from anyone for anything. We were informed that this is impossible. We need to notify all of our plans, and they will help us. And so it happened. The Institute of Public Culture considered our open-air exhibitions, our meetings received rooms. The Lajos Vajda Studio was established in this way at the most beautiful cross-vaulted cellar of Szentendre, active even now.

We organized there more than 500 exhibits in the past 40 years. At the seventies, it served as venue for uncountable avant-garde events. The intuitive-associative-improvisative noise ballets of voice therapy were developed there. Our Bizottság (‘Committee’) band played there many times, and it was the well-known hangout in promoting the performance style. This cellar serves as workshop at times, too. The resin sculptures at the post office were made here in part. Several times I had individual exhibitions in this legendary place.

With my pictures and statues I want to awake in the viewer the thoughts, what even myself do not think. This features my symbolist-surreal works. Motifs are ringed in endless variations. Sometimes I feel like to paint one picture along my whole life. I like merging the antipodes, placing them side-by-side. For me, a timber-saw lying at a watering can is a jinx, while a hole in a coffin is an optimistic action.

13/8/2013 Szentendre

“I painted it blue-yellow-green, because that day I wanted to eat something cold. The other one across yellow-orange I did when I wanted some warm dish – I thought he makes fun of me, but immediately went on: Six basic elements build up the world of painting: triangle-circle-square, yellow-blue-red. Their distortions make the half-forms, and the half-colors. All other is smudge. Look here: the red circle is not any more an illusion of a red apple, but a flat shape only.”

He grabs a pencil and drags the line on the paper.

In Békéscsaba, the next-door old master carpenter could perfectly copy postcards using square mesh. I’ve tried. A few weeks later I found myself in the art circle. Really need to learn to draw, that a man could make abstractions with courage and certainity!

We pass on to an exciting question: what are the collectors looking for? “Until the expressionism, the art was exclusively a contemporary genre. The Baroque man was not interesting in the Gothic. This view changed after Cezanne. He destroyed the system, creating a new artistic language. We have this language internally, although we do not know about it. Since then, artists follow their ideas and thoughts. From this I conclude that the public do so as well. Nevertheless, there are few to afford not creating for orders. These people were Max Bill, Vasarelly, and Kassák. I worked together with them” – in his voice, honesty and respect – “ They were committed to the freedom of the ideas. They also fought that the art should not be the privilege of a narrow elite.”

“The colour reproduction, the serigraphy, and the perfect screen printing. You need to work with high accuracy and to use the always-due material. My wife is a chemist, she could manage the paints. She halped me a lot, and her payment was goog” – he adds with appreciation and wise irony. He encourages us: – “The real collector buys postcards first, then booklets, later he has some money to get a print, and then the time comes to buy an original sheet”

Whitewashed flat walls, huge windows, and shine-free floor are in the studio of unthinkable dimensions. A large work-desk, a chief-like cat on it. She is Marcus, a full-bred wild cat with ruthless nails.

Watching the TV series “University of Omniscience” (TED) we clearly understand at least the essence of constructivism with its simplicity and high level. After patient explanations and some biopgraphical episodes, crossing the main hall, a miracle happens: the walls begin to live. Arcs of olours and forms are carrying us from space to space. Suddenly a fiery red embrace emerges from the plane, instead the grey shadow a vanilla or neon green stripe shows the way. We are roaming among the painting and sculptures.

“I bought this one back in a legacy auction, it lacked from my ouvre” – he shows a packed picture on the floor – “ I have to know where are my works” – he smiles. The first of his each era is here. Based on his previous experience as gallerist, he knows exactly how the audience is working.

Getting into his workshop, energy and activity emanate from everywhere. “ We frequented the non-ferrous foundry of the Csepel Works to experiment with packfong and cooper in night. There were not the best times to accept our results, but from the wievpoint of applied art the experiments on materials are inevitable.” – while talking, he shows the alloys with solicitously, smoothing the wood.

Can we understand so that the material gives the potentials being concealed in it? We idle over this point as well. “You must not cheat. Linen canvas must be painted with linseed oil only. This oil will be soaked up to the canvas, unifying, being eternal, and no shiny. All other paints can peel off, just a matter of time”

25/11/2010 Budapest

www.fajo.hu

“Do we really need a head sculpture completely riveted and tied together with leather straps, to make it like a man wounded in war? What is the point to silence the man with tubes, while his hollow eyes are staring into nowhere? We get to be confused of the awesome heads! Mistaken if we think that the function of the art is the soul-warming expression of the beauty and goodness?

“The real question is: do we have to tell the truth? In a depressed, incommunicable, frustrated world, we feel bad if meeting with the ugly or frightening. We are afraid of what repels. Unable to word, we just feel it.”

“Somebody told on a painting that it is too dark. When he realized that it effected to him because he lost somebody that time, and it reminded him to the emptiness, he reconciled to it, for it helped him to process his pain.” A socially sensitive artist is stretching a theme until a conflict of this type appears.

“I had a teacher of literature, who always conflicted with me. He traced back everything to the Jacobin revolution. I argued in vain to the contrary, quoting excellent literary historians, it was just fuel to the fire. However, I became very fond of literature. I understood and I confess even now that the essence of any artwork is a discovery: it must contain at least one moment of a blissful certainty: it is good living in this world!”

In the eighties he made graphics to poems. “ A holster is my lover, pistols are my children, blue smoke is their chant, be with us, Hubert the Saint ” – Sándor Weöres and Béla Pásztor wrote in the ‘Songs of the Clowns’. “We improvised quatrains, strangle and tangled verses, if one started, the other continued… Perhaps these were not poems but concerted plays” – Sándor Weöres wrote these dedication for the “Book of Moon”.

Since then he deals with the fundamental problems of the life. The ‘Portraits Engraved ‘ is a series of pictures. Again and again, these woodcuts are being renewed in content. They start very simple, then the color prints coming from the blocks will get more and more layers of paint and time. He deals with the subconscious, calling ‘metaarchism’. It presents the man’s rustic beauty.

Man has always lived together with the simple, the clown, the grotesque. Our ancestors expressed the goodness and the wickedness, the desire, the pleasure and the pain, using disfigured bodies. Nature served as example. The half-human, half-animal presentations were popular for these reasons. In our recent culture these ancient, very simple, ancient expressions started to extinct.

“I met the wayang in Indonesia. In Javanese culture, these popular shadow performances, presented by wayang puppets of distinctive human characters, are not only for fun, but serve as moral lessons as well. How could we import to Europe these performances, what they present, understand and prefer in unchanged form for centuries in Asia.“

“Following their traditions, I started to create something new in content. I intend it as a dialog with the Past, while what is Past in the West, it is living Present in the East. “

It is a very special experience to spend an afternoon with somebody who communicates with those living centuries, millennia before.

Important awards:

Munkácsy-díj (1991)

Palladium-díj (2007)

Current exhibition:

„Tradition and transmission”

Address: Hopp Ferenc Kelet-ázsiai Művészeti Múzeum /East Asian Art Museum

Open: until 31-08-2014

“ I knocked about the world, having lived in several places: Ireland, Morocco, Egypt. Where did you travel? We always lived far from both the campus and my atelier. Spending hours sitting on the tram. It is enough to go crazy. You also had to commute a lot? I had a very hard life. Painting by day, working at a café by night. You also had to work a lot? But you were not as very sick as me, were not you?” We are talking like confidential close friends, not seeing each other for ages. She talks, and then asks. She waits patiently, listening with wide-open eyes. I do not take notes.

“When I suffered a stroke, I died.” Had this stroke happened 15 years ago, they could not have saved her. The bohemia came together, and, organized by the MissionArt Gallery, each of nearly 50 artists offered a picture. The proceeds covered the rehabilitation. No one can understand how she was not forced into a wheelchair. She could hardly to speak for two years, just drawing. But half a year ago she bought a porcelain ballet dancer doll. “I am living”, she said. She talks as before and paints again.

She has many friends whom she painted.  Already at the university, having a few free hours, her friends, painters and actors, even her professor, posed before her. “They are so good to me even now, helping me a lot to recover.”

“Sickness, death, fear” is the title of a picture, what she painted a few years before her illness. That time she created a series of ‘Hospital Box Installation’ presenting the events that have occurred later. Experiences, self-fulfilling prophecies, mere visions, or coincidence of unrelated haphazard? It is unambiguous for those living in this situation.

A month before her illness she had an exhibition titled ‘Transcendent Angels’. 23 paintings of angels. And now she is sure that she owes her recovery to the angels. But she is sure as well, that she never wants to exhibit only angels.

Her little room is inhabited by rococo bric-a-bracs of her grandmother. They give purpose and meaning to her new life, until, finally, she will have a normal studio again. Her best place is Balatonszemes, a little village at the Lake Balaton. Before the disease she painted the water, but their house now, because it gives security.

Her family wanted him to be a doctor. And she was obedient. She did so well at the school contest of physics, that she was entered to a famous high school, to the physics/biology major without any matriculation. But when she needed to dissect a terrible eye, she was taken bad. Fortunately, the art teacher noticed her talent in drawing.

My sweeties! Come in!” After a friendly hug, he briskly leads us to the narrow stairway of satin-polished wood. When up, we kick off our shoes at a wardrobe, camuflaged as a giant machine.                                                        .                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       .

.

Following us, his granddaughter, Julcsi arrives rejoicing: „My permanent teeth is coming, Sweety!” The studio is really a study room as well, lot of technical gadgets, touchscreens, a desk and documents. But what documents! The more importants are arranged to a collage: the locksmith master certificate, faded newspaper sheets, a certificate that he did not shot to the ’counter-revolutionaires’ at the 1956 Revolution, a diplom for excellent voluntary activity, and memorabilities of the non-communist era after 1990. „ I finished this table after the Kossuth Prize” – he said.

„I found this playing card in the street, when I worked in Berlin as DAAD fellow. Starting from this moment, the luck and myself were together. That day a couple appeared, they wanted to buy two pictures of me. They did not understand that I wanted to give one of the pictures free. He was the owner of the Storck Chocolate Company with his wife of aristocrat origin. In Berlin I sold all of my paintings. Returning home, we (Éva and myself) were able to extend our house.”

Szűkösen, de sok munkával jutott egy tetőtérre. Az ideálisnál jóval alacsonyabbra futotta. Hétrét görnyedve járkáltunk. Mikor Demszky és Magyar Bálint látogatóba jöttek, zsörtölődtek is: Biztosan azért csináltad, hogy hajlongjunk előtted. „Ezen a lukon másztam át ide. Befért egy ágy és a végébe az íróasztal. Egy nap az egész ház mienk lett és a tetőt is magasabbra ácsoltuk!“

A Magyar Festészet Napja ünnep számunkra, itt megtoldódot egy nem várt programmal. Ekkora gyűjteményt még sehol nem láttunk. A ház minden rejtekében a legnagyszerűbb kortársak alkotásai. Minden milliméter felületet kihasználva: legalább kétszáz festmény. De a lélegzetünk eláll a sok kisplasztikától is. „Nem fér több! Csak ezért nem tudom a többi sok száz művész barátom munkáját begyűjteni.

Kaptam, vettem, cseréltem. Ifj. Szlávics László barátom születésnapomra meglepett a mobil-érméim kicsinyített másaival. Ezekben azonban az is fantasztikus, hogy áram nélkül működnek.“ (Jobb oldalon az eredeti mű.)

A sűrűségben a saját alkotásokat mégis gyorsan kiszúrja a szem: a plasztikába beépített finoman kidolgozott fémtárgy vagy tárgyi sorozatok miatt…

vagy, mert várhatóan mindjárt megmozdul. A művek mellé úgy kerül a cím, mint i-re a pont: „Kettősjáték“ vagy a „Csúsztatás mutató gép“.

A műhelyben pedáns rend. „Százezer dolog van itt, mindenről tudom, hova tettem. Nincs az a barkácsáruház, ahol ekkora választék lenne.

Tudtátok, hogy a fényképezőgépbe 6-os csavarral kell az állvány felerősíteni? De boltban ilyen hatost nem kapsz. Van 1 mm-es csavarom is, alig lehet megfogni.

Annyi anyagom van, akár ötven évig is dolgozhatok belőle.

Nagy szerencse ért nemrég. Szemben megvettünk egy házat és ott be tudom mutatni a legújabb műveimet: “Újra kezdés, Megittasulva, Csirkefogó, Izzoláció, Elszabadult luftbarmok…“ Mit is mondtak a Dési Huber képzőművészkörben, amikor megmutatta a festményét: ‚Ez egy halandzsa, a művészetben azt festjük, amit látunk.‘ Ő ezt látja!

19/10/2011 Budapest

Elérhetőség:
www.edeske.hu

How can you record a movement as a movie? Did you really light the canvas? “ No problem, the fire goes out” -he waves his hand. The soot resulted was fastened with fixative. These were the Fire Pictures.    In the seventies this was not enough for a global fame, but not too little! He is interested in the process of mass moving. Nowadays, what these “splashed” pictures have to do with the move? Their story could be very common. “Oh, yes!” – he smiles – “a stain can come into being everywhere, something turns over or drops down, somebody spills his coffee cup…”                   .                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          .

Well, there is a big “blob” of paint, in this case on a large piece of paper. So far, it is a random act. He cuts it out with a Stanley knife, so it becomes a template. He fastens it to the canvas, then paint is applied on the canvas, using paint roller several times. With patience and precision. It is for an exhibition, by chance.

Don’t you afraid of copying? A silly question. “Oh, no! Only I know how to cut out this curve” – and he self-confidently cuts a new “spark”.

When we ask: ‘How it was made?’ the series of his original ideas intrigues us. Today the dotted and striped objects are classical ones. “ I pressed my painted fingers to the canvass, and rolled upon.” He waits, watching if I believe or not. His movement swings skillfully with a fine piece of his squeegee collection. His calligraphic pictures were created with generous swing as well. He has long bean dealing with the Eastern philosophy, so it was that he arrived to Seoul. Connected to the Olympic Games, a huge exhibition was organized, and he was invited as well.

He seated us with a gesture of high society mood.

He sits gracefully on the couch with confident calm, as if in a day of rest, however, he worked this morning. A picture betrays him: yet it is wet. We are talking on his friends of artists, on famous ones of avant-garde decades, on art-renewing circles. We cannot even count them; to list their names is impossible. It turns out what seemed to be a bohemian world from outside at that time, it was certainly a serious think tank, a precursor of the great changes.

You can not think that you enter into a studio. At arrival it is a decorative reception hall, on the walls important pictures invoking the past. Several drawings, one of his first calligraphies, watercolors. Everything is in due order. Then, it transform to a workshop. It is purpose-made; you can pick up or store anything in a minute. Pulling out a giant drawer of the console table, he surprisingly shows his important tools, the rubber rollers. He has the stock of paints and brushes what exactly needed. He once said he dislike the abundant colours. He introduces us to the birth of his works with delight and without secrecy. One moment, and the workshop returns to be a gallery. We put around the pictures of a series along the walls. You can not get fed up with the variations. We enjoy the show: “You can make a photo on this, and that…”

6/3/2011 Budapest

Lírai, egyre inkább nonfiguratív képeket festettem 2005-ig. Aztán olyan mondanivalók gyülemlettek fel bennem, amelyek közvetlenebb viszonyban voltak a valósággal. Eldöntöttem, hogy a konkrétabb természettel fogok foglalkozni. A képen megmozdult a látvány, teste, aromája és illata lett.                                                                                                                       .

Nehéz ma a festőnek a reális, figurális ábrázoláshoz nyúlni: a fotó inflációs tényezővé vált. Óvatosságból először lovakkal egy térben megjelenő embereket festettem. Úgy gondoltam, a ló a „korrumpálódott” civilizáció, vagyis az ember és a természet (tisztaság) távolodó pólusait közvetítőként összekötheti.

Valamikor egységes kánon volt, mindenki tudta mi a „jó”. A kánon szerinti legjobbakból lettek a mesterek, természetesen őket követték a tanítványok, akiknek a műhelymunkában adták át a tudást. Ma ez másképp működik. A szellemi forradalmak sorra megtagadták a régit, így a festők szorongásos állapotba kerültek: mi van ha mégsem érvényes, amit csinálok?

Történetekkel és színekkel szólok. Azt kérdezem: Mit kezdjünk a világgal, ahol valamiről mindig le vagyunk maradva, az akarat folyton meghaladja a valóságot. Gépek és tükör által próbálom kifejezni a múlt-jelen feszültségébe rejtett mondanivalót.

Az emberek szeretik elkerülni a konfliktust, a kényelmességet választják. Nem akarunk a kínpaddá vált színpadra menni. A személyes élmény direktségének elvesztése árán, kívülállóként viszont szeretjük nézni a cselekmény alakulását. A festményeim értelmezéséhez kell elszántság, hogy végig menjenek az úton, de vigyázok arra, hogy ha poklon át is, de pozitív legyen a végcél.

Néha csak a kézzel és lábbal, vagy bármilyen testrésszel ki lehet fejezni, amit akarok. Nincsen ábrázolási kényszerem, hogy testet is rajzoljak mögé csak azért, hogy bizonyítsam, azt is tudom. Egy ponton el kell tudni engedni a képet.

A fogalmi nyelvet és a látvány általi kommunikációt össze kell fogni. Megtehetjük, hiszen ember találta ki mind kettőt. A beszélt nyelv ugyanúgy, mint a vizuális nyelv a hagyomány része és az útkeresés eszköze is egyben. Egy látványnak az emberi tekintet adja meg az értelmét, az, hogy milyen képi emlékek, gondolatok kapcsolódnak hozzá.

Amit az egységes vizuális kultúrához tudnunk kellene, azt ma nem oktatják. Mégis, jó lenne „képben lenni” a dolgainkat illetően. Vegyünk elő egy lapot, ez legyen az életrajzlapunk. Osszuk be időre, történésekre, vázoljuk fel életünket. A vonalak gesztussá olvadnak, ezáltal értelmezhetők, visznek valahová.

Általában képeken átívelő témákban gondolkodom. Utolsó kiállításomon az emberi- technikai kapcsolódásokkal és az informatika által szabályozott viszonyokkal foglalkoztam. Az egyetemen sokat rajzoltunk modell után, tanulhattunk anatómiát. Belémrögzült egy testtérkép. Alak festéséhez nincs szükségem konkrét modellre, érzem, mikor billen a figura harmóniája vagy bomlik a látvány. Önkéntelenül rántom helyre a vonalat, mint az egyensúlyérzéke által vezetett biciklista a kormányt.

Sokat dolgozom, és időnként elérkezve/felnőve egy-egy gondolathoz, újra ugyanazt érzem: tényleg el kellene kezdeni festeni!

28/6/2013 Isaszeg

“Art is not interested me at all until I was 19 years old. I made athletics. Then we went to Pécs for a competition, and the couch took me to the cathedral. There I saw the frescoes of Károly Lotz. That a man can make such a thing – it influenced me strongly. I decided to be a painter. Later that day I won 13 thousand Forints at the lottery. It was a sign of the heavens, I thought. I bought a series of art books, canvas, and paints. I went out into the field and tried to paint realistically the cow of Mrs. Tóth. It was 3-4 months until the entrance tests. I red and painted day and night. Aurél Bernáth suggested some things. I got accepted to the college, of the 720 entrants 20 persons were accepted.”

The ‘social realism’ did tolerate the presentation of neither the convicts in uniform nor the affections evocating the lost revolution. At the 1965 Autumn Exhibition of Hajdúszoboszló a message of Comrade Khrushchev was red: “the artist does not paint the word either more beautiful or uglier”. He rose to speak, what he said was short and rejecting: “ I tell you what I think: what has no edges, no cut”. He could not exhibit any more. If he wanted to remain an artist, he had to go.

Through Yugoslavia, he arrived in France in 1969, without money and languages. That time the Post-Mail-Art, appearing in postal envelopes and greeting cards, was the expressing method of the freedom. Initially, there were texts on the envelopes, later pictures as well. He started a huge correspondence, receiving hundreds of letters daily from all over the word. Using these, he organized exhibitions. Everything came, even a T-shirt, and a green shoe from Sweden, stamped, addressed.

In France, the state does not support artists. The galleries build up artists. In 1970 a gallerist told me: ” you are forgotten without managing an exhibition yearly”. I presented my pictures at him, but these were small-size ones, so I framed together a figurative and a non-figurative picture. It turned out what I made is the dualism itself. At start, the gallerist sold 36 pieces of mine.”

The last 50 years new styles have not appeared. So we have to use the past. Summing all of the styles having existed since the Egyptian art, 64 combinations are possible. From time to time, he creates dualistic works of his surreal, geometric, figurative, abstract, and contructivist period.

Constructivists generally portray in plane, but everything in the universe is three-dimensional. For this reason, he created the ‘space geometry’, what he presented at the Rome exhibition, organized on the occasion of the 100^th anniversary of Futurism. He brought the motion into the long-existed static presentation, using the inclination of the 3D elliptoid.

To bring new things into the art: it is an evidence for the artists. “You must not deal with outworn ideas”. Here is the source of his diversity of genres: paintings, graphics, prints, mail-art, black stamps, book works, electro graphics, and photos. The Bauhaus made a great influence on him, when photos were taken not from front but from the bottom or from above. He took portraits of famous people, made unrepeatable and unique them using torsion along the blowup. These photos were displayed at the smallest gallery in the word: inside of a small car. Today, these pieces are sold in high price.

He returned to Hajdúszoboszló in 1994. Even now, he is corresponding with the museums and galleries of the world, publishing journals, unflinchingly organizing exhibitions, and establishing museums. In 1996 he opened the international Modern Museum, where his geometrical collection of 100 artists is presented. In Álmosd, in a little village the “Post Art Mail” and his electrographics can be seen, while his grindstone and folk pottery collection is demised to museums.

Exhibitions are targeted to the museums and collectors; of course, there are people of quick-sightedness. The audience does not important, even the impressionists were spat by the visitors. Gallerists have a secret directory of high value, and they do know that the artworks will be really interesting after 5-10-22 years.