New Hungarian Glass (Coleridge, London, 1984)
nature of the sculptures is derived from the artist’s skill of cutting and polishing, which refines their inner structure so as to intensify the sense of space and colour. The imaginary inner spaces are simultaneously elegant and monumental appealing to the deeper imagination of the onlooker and hinting at the ethereal world underlying earthly laws. György Buczko is an individual of extremes. Contemplating his cool rational works it is hard to believe that the same artist creates the most dynamic works of contemporary Hungarian art. Meticulous attention or spontaneous impulse determine the technique used to create very different work from the same material. By “slumping” glass in his pictures he develops the endless malleability of the material highlighting the surprising effects of the undesigned. In contrast his laminated work is regular in design and he explores the complexities of the inter-reaction between the three basic principles of geometry, the prism, cylinder and sphere with the clarity of minimal art. Prisms and reflective surfaces, opalising shades of colour, real and imaginary openings enhance the illusions of space and remind us, with fine irony, of the limits of our sensations. Glass creates surprising effects in the finished work of art as well as in its primary state. In classical art, artists never combined cold and hot glass techniques. To modern artists this concept represents a new and thrilling development. Agnes Kertészti creates stable, rigid, sharp hard forms and malleable, amorphous drops, cavities and irregular inlets freezing the material into its momentory condition in one single work. She makes her small shapes by super-imposing or aligning laminated glass to achieve an effect similar to that inherent in minimal art. By using this astutely controlled technique she creates pieces which reflect completely different formal and emotional elements which are thoroughly modern and characterise the art of the 80’s. After the rational, conceptual tendencies of the previous decades which appealed primarily to reason, intellect, and reflection, a new “sensibility” is underlined in her work, which reverts back to the powers of sentiment and imagination. Maria Mészáros shares the same powers of sentiment and imagination in her work based on casts taken from the human body although the human form is lost during the process of creating the glass sculpture. The material itself is an integral part of the sculpture. The face becomes an impersonal head, and some parts of the body are transformed so much that only a detail or two relates to the original human shape. The molten glass comprises many different pieces which she then super-imposes upon one another. The various plates of glass which she fuses together still retain impurities such as cracks and bubbles, highlighting the inter-relationship between glass in its raw state and the finished glass sculpture. The end result shows a juxtaposition of imaginary space against the reality of the human body. The drama of existence is strained between organic and human forms, molten glass and life itself. Ildikó Nagy Art Historian