ARS POETICA... FOR MY BIRTHDAY
The first thing I noticed was that in recent years every time I was introduced to someone I was the elder; it now seems this is something that will only get worse. Then came Klisé Publisher’s invitation to give an account of my thoughts about the year 2000. It was then that I was finally convinced that our wrapping the world in a net and setting milestones in space and time is not the world’s issue but our own.Which is why, perhaps, it is not the year two thousand that counts, but rather, my lived fifty. Moreover, it is very probable that subjective existence has some determining effect on the world. Our relationship is a give-and-take one, in the process of which we both change.Milestones. About twenty years ago, the eight animal figures of Stories of the World. Made of clay and chaff, coloured with earth-colours. All of them are now in museums. They each afforded a remarkably ancient, atavistic experience in both material and spirit. Before I made them I had seen primeval man’s cave at Lascaux, New Mexico’s Indian villages and the Greek archipelago. What powers the past has; how powerfully definitive they are!
I learned and taught a lot. I am convinced that in the age of the Internet and the electronic superhighway teaching is when one person speaks to another about things he or she knows, perhaps, better. I have always been strict with my students with regard to cognizance, but gave them huge freedom when it came to representation. I read Miklós Borsos’s book in my youth. I glanced back from halfway. It was beautiful. It radiated a San Francis-type of pantheistic feeling. Although Lake Balaton is not exactly the Aegean Sea, I understood that art and life are the same. Ever since I have disbelieved in speculation, and I expect respect to and curiosity about the ways of the world.In the late Eighties I had several joint exhibitions with Yiro Okura. I had the opportunity to meet a non-European artistic attitude that I nevertheless felt familiar and close, and which, whilst visiting the monasteries in Kyoto, gradually became fathomable and ultimately the solely acceptable. Why was it that John Cage said that one of the rocks in the rock garden of the Ryoan-yi temple, untouched for a thousand years, was in the wrong place?; and why was my friend Okura unusually taken aback by this?In the past decades the current events of art have been of less concern to me. Rather, I have been preoccupied with my own and matter’s ’soul’.
Paper, and increasingly better paper. First, I made works which featured not objects but their imprints.A unique – now you see it now you don’t – situation emerged. A white shine on the verge of existence and non-existence. It was this ‘lacuna’ I coupled with the colour of gold. I have never used gold as the barbaric symbol of wealth. I was concerned with the mediaeval notion of transcendental space. What reality! The eye cannot determine the exact location of gold, and this truly leads to an indeterminable non-earthly space.
In retrospect, life produces bizarre order. Initially my works were exhibited in barrel-vaulted cellars (Pécs, Óbuda, Stockholm). Then, moving upwards, baroque monasteries followed (Rome, Lienz, Frankfurt). Then finally, in 1998, the movingly powerful church space of Kiscelli. A great challenge indeed. To increase dimensions, I reinforced the paper pulp with glass fibre. This opened new horizons altogether. The material, once only functional in 2D, became plastic, yet preserved its unbelievable delicacy. It was this direct, mundane sensuality that clashed with the intangible incorporeality of gold, sometimes silver. I exhibited gates that opened into eternity, gaps and scrolls bearing burdensome secrets. It was in such perfect unison with that space that for a long time I thought nothing more could be said.Mozart’s Magic Flute is now playing in my studio, and spring is in the air.
Gábor Záborszky
Budapest, February 2000
Biography
1950 | 17th April, Budapest |
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1974 | Diploma in painting at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts. Postgraduate studies in graphic and mural techniques |
1977–1980 | Derkovits Scholarship |
1980- | Teacher at the Arts and Crafts Secondary School |
1982 | Award at the 6th Norwegian International Biennial of Graphic Art for the innovative use of an old technique. |
1983 | Participation in the “Graphic work from sheet metal”congress at Grado |
1987 | Founds Z/ART Foundation, together with Katalin Bodó |
1988 | Guest at the Kunstgewerbe Schuke Basel and the Akademie Graz |
1989-1995 | Senior lecturer at the Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts |
1992 | Participation in IAPMA congress in Budapest |
1993 | Working in Bonn on a municipal scholarship |
1995 | Receives Munkácsy Award Participates in the International Paper Symposium at Kyoto |
1996 | Scholarship awarded by the city of Münich Z/ART Foundation is founding member of the Budapest Museum of Modern Art |
1999 | Guest at the University of Art, Philadelphia |
2001 | Book published on work’s of 25 years |
2002 | Retrospective exhibition organised by the Municipal Art Museum in Győr on works’ of 25 years |
2004 | Works in the building of MEO Contemporary Art Collection. Completes largest paper casts ever made by him. “The Water-colourist’ Dream” exhibition in the Art Hall Budapest |
2005 | Exhibition in the Zárt Gallery Budapest |
2006 | Receives Érdemes Művész Award |
2007 | Member of the Széchenyi Academy Letters and Art |
2015 | He ends the teaching and he organizes an exposition with the works his masters's and his students's in Gallery Mazart |
2016 | Fugues. Guida-Riposta-Repercussio. Retrospective exhibition, Ludwig museum-Museun of Contemporary Art |