Farkas László, Orosz Péter, Varga Géza Ferenc (Gödöllői Galéria, 1997)

NATURALLY ,, , . n H The artistic activity ofLaszlo Farkas, Peter Orosz and Géza Ferenc Varga, including graphics, sculpture or installation, happens in one single field, and that is nature, three different approaches to nature. They build their oeuvre, with or without intention, perhaps unconsciously, that they give three interpretations of nature. 1. Natura morta. 2. Natura organica. 3. Natura artistica. This sort of artistic approach never exists in itself, mutual overlappings strengthen the layers. 1. Natura morta. All the three artists work nearly exclusively with the materials of nature. With wood, branch, liane, bark, harle, charcoal, stone, hairs, bones, animal skin, with dead materials of nature, the lost, dried out and perished elements. They use found organic objects in building their pictures and sculptures. This way their activity can be also joined to the subject of “poor" art, “arte povera”. 2. Natura organica. All the three artists salute to organically built, always renewing nature. They never distroy in nature, only they use up its elements. Their artworks have already been placed, exhibited in the landscape, in the original, once environment the way living nature and artifical objects are in the same context. 3. Natura artistica. All the three artists rewrite and reinterpret our concept on nature. Artifical and artistic are hand in hand in their case. It is not a conscious program by all means, it is rather about the love and knowledge of organic materials. The three artists worked in the Art Foundation’s Collective Studio in the Lehel Street in the beginning of the eighties, their friendship and common thinking can be dated from that period. Géza Samu sculptor, who died young in 1990, was their friend, with whom they participated at several collective exhibitions. After his death they were the permanent participants of the so-called Tree Circle exhibitions together with their colleague András Huber. László Farkas did not bring sculptures for the present exhibition, though his works suprised the trade at the beginning of the eighties. The mentality of his sculptures, mainly wooden works, can be noticed in his recent graphics. Farkas has been always thinking “in big” and in space. His convex sculpture; executed from hairs and hurds, reminds me to his once project which could not be realized in the Sculpture Park of Nagyatád. His two-dimensional graphics are very airy, he can widen the space of the picture field by drawing a new "landscape”. His horizon takes us back to the world of tales, where anything may happen. His land arts should be realized, to build landscape gardens and parks, to make them the space of human environment, where fishes fly in the wind /one of them is already flying on the peak of a pillar in a country- side sculpture park/, or horns of plenty lie on the sand, from which never-seen animals flow. We feel as if nature itself, grass, tree, flower was bom from the cornucopia. It would be good to live in this nature, to find our path back to our wasted romance. Farkas works with only a few means, using minimal colourity, however he can represent his eternal theme: a never-existed land where no man lived before. During Péter Orosz' career he resorted to biblical themes and objects several times, giving a peculairly original , new interpretation of the topic. He never approaches with religious devotion to these symbols, rather with acrid humour, roughness, sincerity, what is more, with eroticism. His favourite, repetitive motive is the crown of thorns /instead of whitethorn he uses the rougher, more agressive gledicia as basic material/, Jacob’ladder, Goliath’s sling /there is not a word about David in Orosz’s stoiy/, the thread by which the pharaos were mummified, though he uses bark, Cain and Abel, etc. I am sure he will widen the biblical background of his artworks. For the present exhibition he made a new series of crown of thorns, including a ball-like complex of thorns, some other works have only a few or just a single thorn, by minimalizing the number of thorns he strengthens the mysticism of the object, separating the artistic message from the religious one. He, just like László Farkas in the horns of plenty, also uses thye motive of spiral, the symbol of continuity of life. In his sculptures Orosz applies again the layer of bandage-gauze-linen, the ancient material of mummification. What does he mummificate? Dead, wrotten vegetal life. The skin of a tree, that is bark moves and winds as a snake, then curves back to the same branch it has protected before, it is still able to save, to make timeless the original piece of tree. This preservation is a sort of conciliation from the artist’s side, and means he can turn around the story and stop passing and mortality. The basic characteristic of Géza Ferenc Varga’s nearly twenty-years activity is the sculptural reshaping of organic life in his own language and the individual interpretation of forms of nature. He equally makes small sculptures, large­sized works /to public squares and landscape/ and installations. He applies the materials of dead nature, dried out wood, fallen branches, cut out reed, procumbent bamboo, bones of animal carrions, scaly fish-skin, stones of rivers, dried out crops of fruits of plants, seeds, encrusting hulls, outer and inner pillars of skeleton. After the whirling circulation of “danse macabre”, Varga’s artistic creatures come to life. In his art the animal and vegetal remains, trunks, bodies, skeletons, fossile-like sculptures are either constructed from authentic, original elements or absolutely new creatures are born, which may remind the experts and us to once ancient living beings, though we are the witnesses of never-existed creatures. In some cases skeleton, rib, spinal column is built realisticly, in other cases they curve as the DNS spiral, flying above the visitors as unidentified objects. Our books of tales from childhood, a paleontologist, an expert of omitology and a archeologist is needed to find out their secrets. Sometimes it is better to let work our fantasy. All the three artists respect and love nature. I think, for this reason nature let them play with and create artworks. They hold a dialogue. Naturally. Budapest, 5th October 1997 Csaba Kozák

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