Pataki Tibor

He passionately collects paper. „The paper itself signifys miracle. I always visited even the next-door tobacco shop, because the tobacco paper is fine, strong and sometimes has an interesting pattern. One day, receiving something quite special, the tobbaccoonist called me. Sheets of parchment papers were bound to miniature books. Turning then paging two books facing each other, they stuck together that I could never pull them apart.

For me, this was a symbol of the human relations. An idea of a series emerged in me: the Books of Destiny. A next-door lawyer just wanted to throw away her outdated collection of laws. I used them first.

As the pages and letters touch each others then separate, a new story is formed. Just as a relationship between two people. Intertwined personal tragedies, woundings, and burnings can be later dissolved visibly. Then, what is exciting, you are unable to read the original text anymore.

When founding the title of this series, I did not realised that this was a very serious thing. One day, entering a second-hand bookshop, I directly went to a shelf. Absent-mindedly I started to read a book. Its author Eric Berne, was a psychologist, investigating the „transaction analysis”, and he wrote a whole series with the title „Books of Destiny”.

The wall of the studio is filled with books, what he illustrated, or (at least) he designed theit covers. It is no wonder that he has a special link to the book, almost all the same to an old novel or to an outdated phone book. Not to talk about the covers.

“One day we drove to Révfülöp from Veszprém. Wheatfields gleamed yellow, red of the poppies marked out from the wheat. The sweeping picture induced by the motion challenged my interest.”

I made a painting by using the same technique of the artistic books the serie of “Book-Landscapes”. I was amazed that it was possible to reach such a high resolution, that nobody could reach before in another way. It is true, anyway, that I needed the edges of 1200 sheets cut

You can make anything from paper. “Folding is great” – as he wrote in his book, revealing the secrets of origami. Most people enthuse over the frog even now. But, to our greatest sorrow, we could not meet the rabbit of nearly 2 meter high, what he folded from cardboard for an exhibition.

5/1/2012 Budapest

Munkácsy-prize