Fehér, benn / White out

István Csáki drawings 
Lóránd Ármos poems

Exhibition in A.P.A.! Ateliers Pro Arts, Budapest
Ateliers Pro Arts 1085 Budapest, Horánszky u. 5 
Tel.: 486-2370, Fax: 486-2371, 
Email: info@ateliers.hu, www.ateliers.hu)

13th. January– 12th. February 2005.

Art is not only a way of creation and self- expression, but also some kind of remembrance.

The classic genres of art can create a solid base giving the artist the opportunity to build up its own creation based on traditions or combining this classic heritage with its own life experience using modern techniques, in the search for new ways of self –expression and conception of art.

This exhibition has been built upon the conception of the fusion of two artistic genres, which can be seen as a classical artistic phenomena, but also as a very popular phenomena in contemporary art.

The basis of the concept is the landscape or the representation of the landscape, which has been used from the middle of the 15th century to describe not only the realistic features of a natural scene, but also to express the emotional background of the artistic representation. This new way of landscape representation led to the individualisation of this kind of representation, becoming itself an independent artistic theme.

The theme is not free from the subject and even from remembrance, from fiction and from the fictious creation of time and space, which appears more emphatetically in the work of the 20th century artists, especially in the landscape representations, installations, drawings and pastels of the artists of the 90s. 

The subjective ’space opening’ in literature, especially in poetry, it isn’t a new phenomena- the imagery of the poems, the description of the landscape and the exploration of new horizons are frequently used in the so-called classical landscape descriptions.

The connection between a graphic conception and poetry here is not  created by the way  we used to.The drawings and the poem are connected through a very strong and plain symbolic vision.The meticulous technique built up with pin-point –like elements reminds us of the Japanese wood engravings and of the European graphic traditions as well and sometimes suggests the image of a frequency response curve which points to the presence of a living creature , although we cannot see any sign of life, nothing reminds us of the living world except the presence of the silent trees, covered with snow.

The landscape is not the usual, ’talkative’ one- it’s more clear- its purity is also strengthened by the combination of only two colours- black and white. The drawings are completed or even duplicated by the verses of the poem. The project of the installation starts from the fact that Lóránd Ármos created the poem especially connected to these pictures.

The short, concised characteristics of the lines and  verses of the poem shouldn’t be regarded as direct  or common explanations to the pictures. Their intention is to create the emotional and spiritual background from which the spectator can start his journey through the symbolistic landscape features and gives him the opportunity to create his own familiarised interpretation of the landscape based on his individual life experience, memories, creating a pulsating, living image from himself.

The pin-point technique appears int he poem as the marks of the needles on the pictures, giving birth to another meeting point between the poetic description and the graphic representation.

The cleary whitened style of the drawings and of the poem evokes some kind of vague remembrance, connected with the natural phenomena of the ’white out’, which is the English title of the exhibition and which leads us to the dense fog  appearing in the mountains in winter and the emotional experience linked to this phenomena: the loss of our sense of orientation and the fiery moment when we realize that we are particulary alone and forced to create a new base of comparison from inside.

Eszter  Bircsák
Curator and exhibition organiser
Trafo House of Contemporary Arts Budapest

---

White out

You winterize your garden.

Let the less be more.

What's needed is inside.

Let the surface fall.

You winterize your lyre

Improved to muscles, bones.

Get down the shining vanity:

Reality glowes through!

So will all the things

nestle to your hands, slowly.

Location will smooth out

What there is and what could be.

Poem by Lóránd Ármos