Kunckel Zoltán

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“When I introduced my works in Europe first, they said: ‘All of these is sharp and stabbing, it is clear that you grew up elsewhere’. Yes, you get your tangible experiences from where you grew up. I get my subjects from the nature. The tropical lights and reflections are appearing in my geometrical sculptures. In my Caracas studio I create metal sculptures from stainless steel plates, using water jet cutting and then mirror-polishing. Perhaps I balanced this chillness to create my first Tropical Eggs in 2003. I use glass at my friends in Hungary. Now I was poisoned to work with colours and frits. In two days we blew 29 eggs. Every egg presents the color and pattern of a tropical bird. This ruby red one is my favorite.” Ruby gold glass was discovered by Johann Kunckel, alchemist, his ancestor (published first in the Ars Vitria, around 1700)

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I grew up in a multicultural environment. My father is German, my mother Hungarian. I was born in Caracas. From 1900 to the eighties Venezuela was a very receptive country. Expats brought there all sorts of culture. In Caracas, many national festivals brimmed the life. There was a 2000-strong Hungarian community as well, eagerly guarding the traditions of the old country.

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“Our neighbor was Seka (Seka Severin de Tudja), the famous Croatian ceramicist. At 15, I hired in her studio as assistant. She used not ready-made clays but powders. I mixed these according to special recipes. She created constructed forms, sometimes firing 15 layers. That time I already knew that I wanted to deal with some things related to the arts. But there was no training of this type in Venezuela.”

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“After the ‘political change’ (1990) I asked for Hungarian citizenship, and moved to Budapest. I wanted to apply for the Film Academy first, and then finally I enrolled to the University of Applied Arts, design faculty. I wanted to know the devices for the artistic works, so I went through all the workshops. As getting to know the materials and learning the technical tricks, I gained many friends among the students, and the artist-professors greatly impressed me.

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“After graduating, I continued my studies in Berlin. I had studies such as curator’s work, and the role of the art in architecture. Recently I read lessons on the art of South America. There are 2400 galleries in Berlin, and you can visit more than 400 museums there. Not by chance, the top elite artists of Damascus found refuge in Berlin.”

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No secret that he is sensitively concerning to the world’s major social tensions. He has connected to an international art project, in which he designs installations, expressing his opinion on the power and violence using the language of the video and photo.

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