Kecseti Gabriella textiltervező iparművész kiállítása (Dorottya utcai kiállítóterem, 1993)

iVlannerism is not associated with the history of fashion in dress but there is no getting around it when we see Gabriella Kecseti's present exhibition. Manner­ism, a word which comes from the root word for 'hand', originally denoted objects made by hand as well as the manner of their appearance. However, through the centuries the word has received a pejora­tive connotation and Mannerism becomme associated with an affected manner or style in art and elsewhere. In art history, the style that was prevalent between 1530 and 1600 - between the Renaissance and the Baroque period - is referred to as Mannerism. These years were especially important because in this short space of time astonishingly swift changes occurred in the natural sciences, religion, philosophy and economics which in turn shook the fate people had in God, wreaking havoc with their world view and sense of security. We need merely think of Copernicus's discov­ery, Giordano Bruno's philosophical teachings, and Johannes Kelper's theories about the movement of the planets. Furthermore, this period also saw the Refor­mation and Counter-Reformation, the collapse of the guilds, and the rise of economic rationalism. Artists are considered the seismographs of their time. The Mannerists turned against Renaissance harmony, and rejected the principles of order, en­lightenment, and legitimacy. They created forms that did not exist in nature, thereby creating new worlds. Today we are experiencing a New Manner­ism. The last few years have seen the demise of seemingly static political systems, ideas - and ideals, too. We are once again living in a world without sure support, and once again, it is art that is called upon to mirror our fundamental existential predicament. Gabriella Kecseti is like the Mannerists. Having mastered the rules, she now rebels against them. One group of the objects now on display are made of wool. She dyes the wool herself, but even in the earliest phase of dyeing, she leaves room for the unexpected. She does not put the aniline dye through a sieve, but prefers to let the uneven density to produce colour effects of varying light value. Later, she stabilizes the dye, and after the bales of wool drye, she draws pieces out of the fore-yarn, and begins to knit with this thinned yarn. She mixes and uses colour like a painter, but she works with yarn and knitting needle instead of oil and brush. Gabri­ella Kecseti even goes a step further when she approaches the act of knitting, which is in itself a flexible method, in a flexible manner. She goes from flat to inverted stitching at irregular intervals, which results in the individual stitches sticking out of the otherwise flat surface, thereby creating a dynamic textile structure. Another group of objects on display were made from vegetable silk. Material made from flax and hemp are chemically starched and turned into silk yam. The resultant textile is beautiful by itself, as the photog­raphs and displayed objects evidencve, but the artist softens it even further before she begins to knit by gathering the threads into thin bales and brushing them "against the grain". They are then knitted in the just mentioned irregular manner. For shaping her garments, Gabriella Kecseti used stylistic devices prevalent in the Renaissance, from the wide sleeves adorned with ribbons through the long, narrow, V-shaped wrist solutions, from simple, round necks to perforations on unexpected parts of her clothes. But the Renaissance harmony is disrupted by dramatic contrasts and asymetrical ornamentation. Emphasis always falls on the most important parts of the body - the shoulders, the bosom, the arms, the wrists, and the hip-bone. She likes to use the sheered wool from the Hungarian racka sheep separated into locks, and incorporates them with the thick, shorter end into her stitches. The long wool yarn she leaves free. At times these appear in the shape of irregular triangles around the chest, at others they run down the arms and shoulders. Gabriella Kecseti does not make preliminary sket­ches, nor does she produce two garments that are exactly the same. Instead of relying on predefined formulas she prefers to elaborate new systems and interrelationships according to rules of her own. Her relationship to her materials is emotional; her choice of colour and material is guided by her instincts, and so is her needle, especially when she unexpectedly turns from an emphasis on the thick­ness of wool in favor of very fine crocheting. And she does all of this so masterfully, you'd think she had nothing to do but listen to the secret message of the materials she works with which speak so clearly and so well to her alone. Éva Rothman Gelencsér

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