Antigravity is what this exhibition is called where two ways of thinking meet in the most recent works of two glass artists, Bernadett Hegyvári and James Carcass. The works of the former is marked by geometric attitude, while the pieces of her husband are decidedly organic.

Open: 9-31.10.2019

In co-operation with the CAFé Budapest Contemporary Art Festival.

Bernadett HEGYVÁRI (1975) has finished her studies at the University of Craft and Design in Budapest in 1999. After spending 8 years in England she moved back to Hungary and started her hot glass studios with her husband in Tápiószecső. She participates continuously in international and national exhibitions.

In this exhibition she continues the „fragile everyday” series what she has extended the questions further to include what we see and how we see it.

“Although I work with glass, which is normally considered as a material of the applied arts, I create sculptures. Sculptures that are a cross between painting and three dimensional works, therefore putting them into a category is very difficult which is one of my aims. Not being one or the other creates a gentle tension which makes me curious. The game of up and down enhances the uncertainty and allows the viewer to understand the “picture” through the two versions.”

“I am inspired by the sharp light and the uncertain positioning of the elements on the 17th century dutch still life paintings. I like that certain elements are hardly seen whlist others are right ( literally) on the edge. I like this game of hide and seek. It questions the way we see things, the way we create meaning adn what we need to create meaning form what we see.. Light in these paintings is essential as it is for glass and so it is for me.”

James CARCASS (1965) finished his studies at the University of Sunderland Ceramics and glass in 1991. Works in his own hot glass and wood studios in Tápiószecső, Hungary. His works are present in galleries in Hungary and exhibitis and sells his glass and wood sculptures internationally.

These small sculptures of the Wabisabi series take the form of eternal symbols which capture the passage of time and the movement of the universe.

The caltrop grows in some parts of the Tisza river. This aquatic plant has characteristic leaves, and its fruit of typical four-horned form was ground, and they made a type of bread long ago or even today. It is also named water chestnut. The horned and pricking fruit hides in the mud, if you step on it, it really hurts. Had I made a sculpture of original proportions, it would have such a long pin, but it is a form of sacred meaning for me, so its cusps are shorter.             .                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       .

I carved from one piece of poplar wood. I needed to deepen the hole inside across a narrow slit. I had to invent some special tools. For artists difficulties are not troubles. On the contrary, it is a great joy: ‘I can make it!’ You can see a tiny point of light in the real depth if the sculpture: it is a slight mirror.”

In the slope of Sashegy, the old house hides in the dense vegetation. “ I grew up in a Kőbánya house with garden. Next door, there were the remnants of a cooper workshop, with axes, saws. I brought a planer from it. We try to have responsibility towards our environment: preserving rainwater, collecting garbage selectively, choosing what we eat. Even I mate the stove here. It is summer now, but we burn the litter in it.”

The lemon-balm tea is delicious. The house is filled with surprises. Above the bed, a heart-garden, made of matchsticks. A camera obscura is at the window, hidden in a drum. Another one is at the workshop, invoking the artistic concept of Géza Samu. “I am a great admirer of him. Staring from the country, he authentically applies the material culture of the village life. My roots are urban, and my parents were engineers. Even so, his work is important to me, it means a parallel inspiration. The old wooden fork makes me remember.”

The never-used broken barrel stave, the 40-pound weight truncated by improper casting, a bag of shoddy pearl buttons found at a doorway received a new life. The title of the flaked sculpture is an Indian dish: ‘sour cream delight’. In the middle of the weight is a hole, a tiny mirror is at the bottom.

“As a sculptor, I am interested in the dimensions.” The grooves on the pleated brass plates are breaking, colour and reverse sides are running parallel. A flattened reed is optically emerging from the space.

“How can a plant live? I am excited by the tranquillity! I am looking for what they have related to the human culture.” A blade of grass can express anything. The letter “V” is a Sanskrit symbol of “Virya”, the masculine life energy itself.

There is no plant without water. Two reed roots reach the imaginary water level. From the middle, a fresh reed is emerging upward. With some magic, a tulip motif of three points comes to life.

„I make an effort to understand my objects.” What is the message of this pike? The mammoth pine pike emerges from the heavy ground, its material was found around the Nagyatád Art Colony. As a cone of a volcano, it could be even the Badacsony. Its basement consists of mud from the nearby Nagyatád creek, covered by limestone powder. A charred wood on the top makes the experience real. „My friend has a copy. He does not dare to dust it, just blows a bit. He tells that nowadays there are two to clean it. When passing the object, his two year old son blows on it a big with the same precaution.

21/7/2011 Budapest

Over time, old furniture are drying up, warping, the wood cracks, legs loose, drawers get stuck. Most of the time they are discarded at house clear-outs. But, wood being cut decades ago means reusable treasures for the expert eyes.“We drove home at clear-out time, collecting usable planks and throw-away drawers, my wife suddenly ordered to stop. There is a bench! Full braking, we jumped out from the car, and we started to pull out the bench from the heap of the discards. It did not move. It was a street furniture bench, screwed to the ground.

” Fifteen years ago one of my mate took me to a restoration workshop. They engaged in renovation and conversion of Empire and Biedermeier furniture. Along three months I polished only, I did not know where I was. Later, I got a work: to dismantle and reconstruct a commode. It succeeded, the German boss’ eye opened wide, then he only assigned the work to me: cut this piece off, put a column there… Ruined furniture was brought here from all over Europe.

I dismantled hundreds of furniture into small pieces. There is no secret to me: joints, plywood thicknesses, and method of gluing tell me everything on the furniture. When I went to another restoration workshop, I was able to make whole transformations, constructing chest of drawers from armchair, cocktail cabinet from writing desk… what the customer wanted.

Renovations are ordered by the antique shops, and the home decorators come with all kind of ideas as well. I get a drawing or a photo, e.g. of an Empire clock case. It is said: from it, make a cocktail cabinet of a man’s height. Or, the round table be expendable, comfortable for twelve people.

The original of this davenport, in Vienna, has a height of 147 cm. I needed to enlarge it proportionally to 170 cm, what is more, its intended purpose was changed. It was two weeks’ work to stick together the pieces according to the blueprint. To invent the dovel joints needed an intensive brainwork.

For the fine joints I use traditional methods only, drawers are made only with grooves. For the fine plywoods I use organic glue only, but I prefer the thick plywood cut by myself, of tropical wood.

The body of any furniture is made of old pine. I bring home any discarded pieces of wood, I get used furniture from friends. After disinfection, I cut them to laths, then the laths are glued together to a given form using my helping hands, the clamps.

It is covered by veneer of fine wood. In the pattern of the apple wood veneer you can see the fine waves, produced by the wind, keeping the branches bending. The lemon wood is velvet-like, glittering a little because of tiny quartz grains coming up from the soil.

Using walnut, you can surface big patterns, even faces and animals are looking back from a cabinet.

To design a hidden treasure drawer is a great pleasure: to find the place of the the small peg opening the secret lock, or of a piece of leather to pull up the hidden drawer. Or what should be the support of a robust and heavy table, that is easy to be lengthened by a tiny housewife (furniture photos by Attila Jámbor)

There are perfect copies, and there are ones to meet today’s claim produced by recomposing a classic style. He even signs these using the wax seal of his father. They are bound up together that the materials used are already perfectly dried up, so you could not be disappointed. We can find peculiar delight in the brillant solutions of the old and proven techniques, not talking about the use of the natural materials. The proof: the dog of the master joiner is licking animal glue.

30/9/2011 Budapest

I worked recently in India, at the Ahmedabad University, as a Charles Eames scholar. I had brought there a design. The twenty-five-meter high “Indian Desire” is a steel tower of six moving parts, to be set up on the shore of an artificial lake.   Static and dynamic load tests of the construction are performed at the IIT Delhi Institute, in the Silicon Valley of India. Computers will control the tower; by anyone from anywhere in the world via the Internet, the positions and the colors will be variable.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  .

We are living inside of boring dogmas, chasing unattainable ideas. I am consciously looking for the opportunities, that are caught up to us, physical or spiritual senses. This is a cube and the symbols of three religions. The symbols are disintegrated in a given space, made up with their complements, separated, an mixed. These will be integrated only in our mind and in different ways, when we are walking around. The composition „Holy Land” was made in this spirit.

For more accuracy, I asked the Great Mufti of Gudjarat, whether what is the right direction of the Moon according to the Koran. At the Cross of the Roman catholics there is no ambiguity, but I did not want to have any problem of the crescent. I arrived at a given time. „His Excellency is sleeping” – his aids offered excuses. I waited there three hours for the response as follows: „Does it matter? The Moon in the sky once decreasing, once increasing…”

His workshop is a medley of the traditional craftsmanship and the modern industrial ambience. At 140-year old inherited carpentry tools there are Engineer Pro design software and laser technology. “I am a tolerated man with my dreams. My family gave me space to experiment. I started with wooden toys. I began to produce meditative toys, based on the humane curiosity. I never cared the struggles among the others.” At the shelf a little box acts as reminder: bird cutter, tiny driller.

At the Nürnberg toy fair I met the world’s greatest authority, the success manager of the Rubik’s cube. He told me with stiff sincerity: “Your interpretation is different. Do not want to produce toys. These will not be successful. Your objects are of art”. It was a painful but, at the same time, a joyful recognition. So I started with sculptures. I am neither manufacturing nor selling objects. I made unique piece only, I destroy the intermediate pieces, what I think being unsuccessful.”

“My YNI (yes-no-inactive) element, stretching to a convex-concave-linear space frame is an abstraction of high priority, suggesting analogies. You can puzzle any regular or irregular bodies, a sphere or a cube, even any shape indefinable by the traditional geometry.”

“Engineer friends are terrified seeing my seven-side cube. Cutting out a piece of the cube, we receive the seven-side one. It is an interesting form, which is less than perfect but it has personality. Do not mind if we lose something if we know that we win something.”

“My Vari-Art series goes in this way: I deliberately mess up simple, trivial forms, so the perfect gets a new meaning. This is a cone. But rather not! Using a little trick, and because of its sectioning it can be transformed to innumerable shapes, even to a spiral form. And it is variable underway. We can give it different roles on the chessboard: king or pawn, friend or foe? After all, we are equals; we became whatever within the limits of our ability. The quality of our relationship is figureable.”

“Just for experimenting, two large cones, similar but somehow different in their soft arches and hard lines were suspended at the Museum of Fine Arts with title of ‘Nexus’. The floating figures were steered from terminals of several museums. The aim and task were to make connections in indirect way. Many did not notice even that they are two, connected. My sculptures are testing you, provoking you to act and to rethinking. After all, interactivity makes us to feel that we are useful…”

15/12/2010 Budaörs

www.meditationtoys.com

A móri Képző- és Iparművészeti Szabadiskola Alapítványát 22 éve magánemberek, művészek, mesteremberek alapították, a helyet a Móri Önkormányzat adja. 1994 óta nyaranta művésztelepet és nyári táborokat szerveznek hivatásos képző- és iparművészek részvételével illetve gyerekek számára.
.

.

Mór központjában, a későbarokk stílusú Lamberg Kastély volt gazdasági épületeit a helyi művészközösség önkéntes munkával alakította át a művésztelep igényeinek megfelelően. A hely infrastruktúrájának fejlesztését és fenntartását az Alapítvány saját erőből fedezi.

A helyre hozott kútházban működik a fazekas műhely, a volt szamár- és lóistálló a felújítás után jelenleg műhelyeknek és egy kiállító teremnek ad helyet.

A műhelyekben szakemberek és mesterek vezetésével a magas művészetekben és népi mesterségekben meglévő technikai ismeretek átörökítése és tanítása folyik.

Egész évben nyitva áll a kortárs hazai és nemzetközi művészeti élet szereplői számára. A művésztelepen készült alkotások képezik az Alapítvány állandó kiállításának alapját.

Az egyes műhelyek önfenntartóak, év közben művészi kivitelezési munkákban működnek közre.

Több műfajban tevékenykednek: Hagyományos népi fazekasság, cserépkályha készítés, rakuzás,

szobrászat, viaszveszelytéses és precíziós bronzöntés, kézműves kovácsolás,fafaragás, nemeztextil falikárpit,

tűzzománc, grafika és szitanyomás, fotózás és camera obscura, művészkönyvek.

Állandó jelleggel sem állami, sem önkormányzati pénzügyi támogatásban nem részesül.

Állandó fizetett munkatársa nincs. Az Alapítvány tagjai önkéntes és ingyenes munkájukkal több millió forinttal gyarapítják Mór város vagyonát.

A közösség tagjai becsülik egymást, és a vezetésükre bízott műhelyeket. Nyitott szellemben és kultúrált körülmények között fogadják a vendégként érkező művészeket és megrendelőket.

2/8/2012 Mór

A bejegyzés a www.moriszabadiskola.hu honlap anyaga alapján készült saját fotóanyagunkkal illusztrálva.

“I was working for two years on furniture in a big house. The customer paid me in due way, but the job started to be monotonous. To entertain myself, in evening time, I got down to carve some funny beetles. Then I was suddenly invited to the prestigious Cologne Furniture Fair. The booth was fairly small, but I spent several nights restless, what I could exhibit. I had a cupboard, stylish, but nothing special. Then an idea came, and the furniture-sculpture was born.

I had a week to carve a large ant eating echidna, and I placed on the cupboard. At the day of exhibition opening my neighbour warned me: “ If you did not double your prices, they would not take you seriously!” At that moment a gentleman of Churchill type stopped at my booth. Black suit, hat, belly, and cigar. “How much? “– he pointed at the cupboard. I prepared myself to bargain, but he said nothing but paid. There was no way backward.

“I was around five. Next to our house a friendly chap made the restoration of the statues of the Count Károlyi mansion. He talked to me and I liked the way as he hammered. Acquiring a hammer and some chisel from my father, I started to pit-pat the stones. Martha, an old lady lived in the mansion, a retired art teacher. She was painting in the garden. She was very kind allowing me to sit next to. I learned from him to draw in the afternoons. I attended school, and I think my father arranged it with her. Our neighbour was a carpenter. His workshop had a wonderful atmosphere, in winter he fired his stove with waste wood and chip. I spent a lot of time with him. There was not so much what they taught me at the vocational school. Finally, I graduated as an engineer of wood industry. The rest just came…”

This log house was built around the workshop.

Sitting on the bench at the goat statue, we have a tee. “My wife wanted to move to the capital. In this district, Hidegkút, the building plot was cheap, we bought a little house, it is the workshop now. We needed to build a house to live in it, but I want to build by myself. Taking out a loan, and I started to look for a right material. It is difficult to find timbers of which the diameters at the base and at the top are mainly the same. A friend of mine, a forester, helped. All of the timber was loaded to rail at the Zemplén Mountains, and we waited it at the Solymár railway station with 3 truck. I leaded the convoy with my small car to home, but the convoy disappeared around the bend! They retained at a steep. They turned, and came to the house in sternway. In seven months, this house swallowed timber of 65 cubic meters, and a lot of friendly help, measured by numerous boxes of beer. That was the leave period what I got from the Opera House, where I was hired as stage-set carpenter. It was an exhausting work, but you could learn some humility after shaving of timber, 1500m long. Building in all the lumbers, I did not want a stock house.”

Meanwhile a new style emerged. Rustic cabinets, desks made of mixed wood laths, carved cupboard leaves modelled after coat-hangers. He used 70 different woods till now. Timber merchants inform me when they find some interesting material. He is thinking on surprising combinations, for example, inlaying expensive ebony into driftwood. He invents non-existing animals and figures called sculpture-furniture. Birds and antelopes, a milk-woman is drying next to the TV set.

In the workshop we saw exquisite fine tools; each is well worth a story. Sketches of animals, forms, parts of statues, photos.. We have a lot of questions, but his wife horns in: “Can we go to table tennis?” He excuses himself: “Friends are waiting…”

Pesthidegkút, 2010. november 20.

“I prepared myself to participate in the “India” exhibition of the Sterling Gallery. After making a ring of cat’s whiskers, I wanted to construct a ring of tiger’s whiskers. Bogi (his wife Boglárka) surprised me at the whiskers. She called the Zoo

They said: ‘You have great luck, had you called us yesterday, we would have said no, but just today we found two files’. It was made of the one, the other file is waiting for being inserted.”

“We live together with my parents. Ever since I can remember, my father is whittling in the basement. The outbuilding was weaving plant and metal workshop as well. When Bogi and myself received this place to use, we needed a lot of tools. The stove was bought from the flea market, a familiar master gave us this turning lathe, and hammers arrived from here and there…”

The equipment of the workshop strongly reflects their many-sided interests. Before the university, he graduated at the “Art and Crafts High School” as apprentice in metalwork (vocational certificate). This workshop was established using experience from there. Thus, for example, they have a classic Brett-Guard table saw. Using this device, it is easier to work with straight back, and collecting the metal filing.

For casting with lost-wax technique you need a wax injector. For a son of a devoted do-it-yourself family it is not a big problem to recycle a gas boiler thermostat, and producing this important tool. Bogi created her “gopher”ring using this injector.

“We learned object creative arts. During my Dutch fellowship I made this “Dino” chair. I could hardly go out to the streets being asked: “Where can we buy this?” Really: this is the question, where could I make it manufactured?

This pepper mill grinds in several grades. Not only practical, but it can become a table decoration as well. We would like to see it on our dining table!

We walking around the house, and then out to the yard. “Grandma planted not only pine-trees with passion, but gourd as well. From this, I made a rebec first (the ancient violin), then a Saxon lyra. The walnut was produced with a little sculpturing.”

In the garden there is a shed, under construction. It hides the old anvil of 100 kg around. The steel knife was made on it, using Damascus technics and youthful devotion. To produce a blade by forging layers is the grand test of the craftsmanship.

On the grass there is the model of the play-sculpture Dragon, diploma work of Bogi. “The Dragon is a frequent motif of the Gypsy tales. In a small village, Bódvalenke, we made the replica of this form, helped by the local Gypsy people. Its skeleton was made by traditional basket weaving techniques.”

The afternoon passes away, turning cool. “Do you really want to see the metal casting? “ We can hardly wait to this moment at the workshop of akchemist’s atmosphere; this is the highlight of our visit!

22/6/2011 Budapest

Read more:

www.imreiboglarka.com

www.szilosa.blogspot.com

If you want to visit a studio, you had better to be informed. Nowadays it is not a relatively hard job, being the Internet at hand. To get information from acquaintances would be worthwhile. For me, however, the surprise and the personality belong to the real artistic pleasure. So far, I did not see a Ficus bonsai of two meter high. As I was never seated at a table, assembled such a masterful way.                                                  .                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   .

The first time in my life, life-size animal sculptures of special carving surrounded me.

And, to tell the truth, it is a rare experience to meet a person who talk about the world and about his thoughts on it without any hypocrisy.

The wood is a wonderful material. The deep brown African wenge, the reddish barwood (padauk), and the purple amarant by themselves trigger my respect, and the perfect refining amazes me. But, I did not even dream till now that not only these noble woods but the simple plywood can produce a wonder.

A műteremben a művek gondosan letakarva, a fa finom pora mindent belep. Drámai hatású a leleplezés: feltárul az élet könyve, a lélekedények, a csomók. Íme az alkotó gondolata, amit érdemes át és átolvasni, hogy többek legyünk és ne csak belépjünk, hanem értsük is amit látunk:

„Ma – szándékom szerint – munkásságom az imádság vagy spirituális praxis egyfajta sajátosan mai, modern formája – nem az istenség közelségéből fakadó megismerés többlete, hanem a távollétéből vagy legalábbis érzékelésének hiányából eredő rossz közérzet és nyugtalanság, valamint e hiány betöltésének vágya artikulálódik efféle reintegrációs törekvésben.

Figyelmem mindinkább a hagyomány felé fordul; itt remélem megtalálni azokat a szellemi tendenciákat, melyek végtelen időkön keresztül forrtak, formálódtak az időtlen múlt kohójában, hogy utóbb gyógyító erejükből vígasztalást meríthessünk.

Ez az irányultság oka lehet annak, hogy egy ideje már munkáim voltaképpen edények, melyek minden formai attraktivitásukkal együtt csak mintegy foglalatát, héját képezik a bennük önmagát kinyilvánító magasabb, láthatatlan erőtérnek, és ugyanezt a sokféleség oppozíciójában megmutatkozó egység vagy teljesség kiegyensúlyozott harmóniáját kívánják érzékeltetni kétfejű figurális műveim.

Ennek érdekében szemléleti tisztaságra és technikai perfekcióra törekszem.“

9/3/2011 Budapest

szocsmiklostui.hu