Romvári János kiállítása (Stúdió Galéria, Budapest, 1983)

János Romvári is an analyzing artist who takes his raw material om details picked out of the everyday reality wich then he mphasizes. He searches the connection of different phenomena ir from each other in space and time. In establishing a connection etween them, he evaluates them and expresses his personal elationship towards these facts, events and the material world, le believes in the possibility of an all embracing picture, of a /nthesis being the vehicle of ideas and meaning. His starting pint is the present and his environment: this is from where he loves away and to where he comes back. He tries to find his place n the world. In his analysis lyrical, subjective elements have equal place to eason. This is not identical with the irrationality of startling ssociation of ideas — his tone is meditative and calm. He uses he montage, this old device for associating ideas and pictures, but n a peculiar, volatile way: he creates montages in the space out .f photos and drawings applied onto light-sensitive glass-plates. L|is works are similar to objects since they are tangible, often nassive boxes — but in the same time they are ephemeral: the ransparent picture takes shape only when seen from a given tngle, then vanishes like the figures of a kaleidoscope. ... This similarity to real objects is especially there in his work mtitled „Great choice” which consists of elements that can be urned over like posters on a revolving frame in shops. However, imongst the wall paper samples shown in it shocking news, nediated by photos, are concealed. The same motifs come back iartly in his „Monotone sounds while having breakfast”. Here >hotos reduced to great screen and transformed graphically, are applied onto glass plates. Depending upon the angle of view we nay see either the events fixed on the picture, or ourselves, rhese pictures are a sort of self-examination. One of János Romvári’s sources for the idea of superimposition n space and time was the study of the monuments of ancient wall taintings The desing emerging from underneath the peeling coat if plaster appear on the same plane as the layer above them and is undefined spots contribute towards the new picture. The ex­­lerience of this phenomenon illustrating tangibly the great time ntervals led him to basic formal solutions and motifs. Pictures, vriting and signs appear in Romvári’s many boxes as imprints of lifferent eras following each other. An ancient spiral design as a ower layer is a recurring motif from his early works. In his ,,His­­orical overview” there are different characters coming from lifferent periods of time above it. In his „Interference” a rubber :ube in a courtyard of a tenement house corresponds to it. Titles play an important role in Romvári’s work. Ambiguity> uns and translating directly the basic idea of a given work intoa itle, not only guide the onlooker, they are vehicles of self-irony s well. His „Synthesis /attempt” (an untranslatable pun with the rord „synthesis”, the first syllable of which — syn — means in Hungarian „colour”, and so the whole title has the meaning ,,co­­>ur (thesis) attempt” evokes the great painters Csontváry, Vaj­­a, and Derkovits whom he considers to be his ideals. The synthe. s is, of course, imaginary; what is important is that he indicates is intention and gives a short confession about his art which is le n emphasized by the colours. .. . In his great box, called „Interieur”, things belonging to the ame world of experiences, the environment of city-dwellers and the world of inner courtyards are condensed into a puritan still life, into a space that has a familiar athmosphere to us, imitating the effect of holography with a simple periscope-system. Romvári’s attempt to embrace more and more real space, which is at the same time an ordered one, is stronger and stronger. He turns away from presenting an illusory space. He has made a step into this direction with his „Transformati­on” at the exhibition entitled „Evoking space”, in the Fészek Club, although this installation, consisting of collages and slide projection, is also one-dimensional. The multi-dimension comes to light in several phases. Without slide projection it is only the „glass-photo” portraying a standing human figure and e hand which is cast on it (essentially a self-portrait) and the paper­­spots floating in the air which emerge. When the colour slide, a variation of the same self-portrait, is projected on them, the space comes to life and grows wider — but the slide itself be­comes transformed and more plastic since it is divided on diffe­rent planes in different distances. The glass-layers that are carry­ing the figure of the artist refract the rays of light similar to a lens and they act as an intermediate medium. When entering the space marked off with black, we get into a working mechanism „of a model of art.” The „Approach” is an intermediary step which keeps the form of a picture, not a box, but nevertheless marks off a space for it­self. . . . The subject matter of this work is the alternation of what is near and far away: the casting on each other in alternating order the micro-environment the bird’s-eye view and a real map; its theme could be best characterised with the quotation „for somebody else this country is nothing but a map” (from a poem of the Hungarian poet M. Radnóti). The play of the transparent and not transparent materials and the quiet colours (the use of white with different tonalities of the grey) make a fine general effect, a lyrical athmosphere and make us forget the coarseness of the different materials and the objectivity of the photos. The present exhibition here, in the Gallery „Studio”, is not a retrospective one. The artist condenses the problem with which he was occupied until now into one single work. His old dream, to arrange a whole intérieur, is fulfilled. This intérieur is the continuation of the real winter street outside the Gallery, but here instead of snow-flakes bits of information are falling on us and the transparent surface of snow-fences becomes an „informa­tion-collector”. The onlookers walk amongst ,,by-passers” (cha­racterised with their environment, with their districts) repre­sented on photos. In the background knotted cords, old devices for storing information which has taken up Romvári’s attention for some time now, are to be seen. Their colours and decorativity answer to the painted surface of the snow-fences. Past and pre­sent, everyday (but not always intimate) reality, and events occuring far from us which we are rarely aware of although we can not free ourselves of them — these are the elements from which Romvári creates a thought — provoking work. With con­trasting the conventional signs, the facts abstracted into screen, the anonymous photos and the individual mark, the gesture of painting and the unsubstantial „glassphotos”, he tries to achieve a synthesis between the object and the subject, to bring out the tragedies and the dreariness of everyday reality — and while doing this, to overcome it. (Katalin Bakos)

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