Záborszky [antikvár]

ARS POETICA FOR MY BIRTHDAY The first thing I noticed was that in recent years every time I was introduced to someone I was the elder; it now seems this is something that will only get worse. Then came Klisé Publisher's invitation to give an account of my thoughts about the year 2000. It was then that I was finally convinced that our wrapping the world in a net and setting milestones in space and time is not the worid's issue but our own. Which is why, perhaps, it is not the year two thou-sand that counts, but rather, my lived fitty. Moreover, it is very probable that subjective existence has somé determining effect on the world. Our relation-ship is a give-and-take one, in the process of which we both change. Milestones. About twenty years ago, the eight animal figures of Stories of the World. Made of clay and chaff, coloured with earth-colours. Ali of them are now in museums. They each afforded a remark-ably ancient, atavistic experience in both material and spirit. Before I made them I had seen primeval man's cave at Lascaux, New Mexico's Indián vil-lages and the Greek archipelago. What powers the past has; how powerfully definitive they are! I learned and taught a lot. I am convinced that in the age of the Internet and the electronic superhigh-way teaching is when one person speaks to anoth-er about things he or she knows, perhaps, better. I have always been strict with my students with regard to cognizance, but gave them huge freedom when it came to representation. I read Miklós Borsos's book in my youth. I glanced back from halfway. It was beautiful. It radiated a Saint Francis-type of pan-theistic feeling. Although Laké Balaton is not exactly the Aegean Sea, I understood that art and life are the same. Ever since I have disbelieved in speculation, and I expect respect to and curiosity about the ways of the world. In the late Eighties I had several joint exhibitions with Yiro Okúra. I had the opportunity to meet a non-European artistic attitűdé that I nevertheless felt familiar and close, and which, whilst visiting the monasteries in Kyoto, gradually became fathomable and ultimately the solely acceptable. Why was it that John Cage said that one of the rocks in the rock gar-den of the Ryoan-yi temple, untouched for a thou-sand years, was in the wrong place?; and why was my friend Okúra unusually taken aback by this? In the past decades the current events of art have been of less concern to me. Rather, I have been preoccupied with my own and matter's 'soul.' Paper, and increasingly better paper. First, I made works which featured not objects but their imprints. A unique - now you see it now you don't - situation emerged. A white shine on the verge of existence and non-existence. It was this 'lacuna' I coupled with the colour of gold. I have never used gold as the barbaric symbol of wealth. I was concerned with the mediaeval notion of transcendental space. What reality! The eye cannot determine the exact location of gold, and this truly leads to an indeterminable non-earthly space. In retrospect, life produces bizarre order. initially my works were exhibited in barrel-vaulted cellars (Pécs, Óbuda, Stockholm). Then, moving upwards, baroque monasteries followed (Romé, Linz, Frankfurt). Then finally, in 1998, the movingly power-ful church space of Kiscell. A great challenge indeed. To increase dimensions, I reinforced the paper pulp with glass fibre. This opened new hori-zons altogether. The material, once only functional in 2D, became plastic, yet preserved its unbelievable delicacy. It was this direct, mundane sensuality that clashed with the intangible incorporeality of gold, sometimes silver. I exhibited gates that opened into eternity, gaps and scrolls bearing burdensome secrets. It was in such perfect unison with that space that for a long time I thought nothing more could be said. Mozart's Magic Flute is now playing in my studio, and spring is in the air. GÁBOR ZABORSZKY Budapest, February 2000