Bálind István festészete (1996)

Line as twine (About István Bálind) Káin és Ábel (45x65 cm) Cain and Abel MÓZES KÖNYVE CIKLUS (RÉSZLET) 1995, OLAJ, VÁSZON, HÍMZŐFONAL MOSES BOOK CYCLE (DETAILE) 1992, OIL, CANVAS, EMBROIDERY COTTON f n one of the most important passages of his late work, The Joy of Text, Roland Barthes identifies text with textile saying that the latter should not be grasped as veil with sense or truth hidden behind, but text grasped as textile is being formed through continuous interweaving and it composes itself. At the same time the subjectum - just like spider weaving its web - dissolves, disintegrates in the constructive secretion of its net. I think it is also the most proper to emphasize textile-likeness first of all when looking at the latest paintings of István Bálind, grasping the line comprehended as twine even if these works put us to a dilemma about the correctness of our starting point. Its two series of figurative paintings we are talking about, which even with their titles invite us to literary sceneties, mostly to the world of the Bible, and they tempt us to moral and allegorical "ties". But that is A létra (50x65 cm) The Ladder only the illusory appearance, a kind of shroud with not ready sense and truth behind, but rather art, the art of questioning, swaying and systematical removal of conceptually conceivable truth. There is, for example, the series of Érints meg engem ("Touch me") from 1 992, eight apparently easily "solvable" paintings because each of them are taking us to well-known sceneries and showing towards toposes with rich symbols (Az Olajfák hegyén: "On The Mountain of Olive Trees", A madár: "The Bird", Kiűzetés: "The Expulsion", A bűnös: "The Wicked"). We are inclined to think that we only have to take the good old iconological method and the text explains the message of the paintings by itself. But it is not like that. All the paintings are formed so as to make the identification with their titles more difficult, sometimes even impossible, in "The Expulsion" with its three-legged, three-handed figure, tottering shadow-like, even God would find it hard to recognize his Adam and/or Eve. It is not only because the Bálind-figuration is giving up the traditions of religious painting - which one?, we could ask - in a sacrileging way, but because they are all phatic paintings in the sense that has been defined by Georges Roques: with "aimed painting" that emphasizes certain details, fragments only, and indistincts contexts or puts them in brackets is a different way. These paintings are difficult not only to make out - there is nothing to tie them to - but also to remember them, as remembering is based on similar topographical connections to interpretation. Consequent elimination of context - and breaking off self-evident ties - is even more obvious in the Támogatók: Nemzeti Kulturális Alap Repro-Míló Kft. Lami Kft. Design: Baráth Ferenc Fordítás: Molnárné Szabó Éva series Mózes könyve (The Book of Moses) where Bálind cut out details from his own completed paintings and fitted or more exactly sewed them into other paintings. The new context, of course, receives the motif taken out from somewhere else with aversion, so both of them need post-modification, but however succesful the association of elements is, it is always formal - so aesthetical, the coherence of the painting seqregates itself from the supposed coherence of the sense of the painting and the imbroglio of the two results the textile in the sense of that of Barthes, an unsolvably complicated handwoven. In it there are fibres obviously going back to the childhood (leisurely scribblings), ones with the aim of hiding other fibres (coverspots) and there are ones being expressed in their own glory (the independent, free spread of certain materials including canvas twine-line). But are there any ideas as well? Yes, there are also ideas but not with metal-glittering like the Platonic ones, not tied precisely like the concepts and mostly not behind but in the handwoven. — ... ' . i Nő kutyával (55x65 cm) A Woman with the Dog Zoltán Sebők. . T

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