Gaál József

Gaál József Corpus Hystericum Opening: On 2019 February 15 at 18 o’clock, the opening will be presented by art critic Luca Cserhalmi. This year the celebratory events of the 20‑year‑old Godot Gallery include a key element: the gallery will arrange, for each of its most important artists, a special exhibition in this jubilee year, showcasing the artist’s latest works to the public. We would like to draw attention to the fact that, although we speak of the living classics of contemporary art, these artists remain, to this day, exciting creators who respond to the events unfolding around them and to changes in the visual arts world. In this series, the first artist – Gaál József, who has collaborated with the Godot Gallery for the longest time – held his first show with us back in 2000. Gaál József (1960), visual artist, lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hungary, and art writer, creates not only paintings but also graphics and collages, while the sculptural manipulation also forms an integral part of his work. His series build on one another; their themes and motifs return in a never‑ending cycle of research. The focus of his art is the human being; he essentially seeks to express the tensions that reside within us. In the spirit of grotesque art (gröt — Szeifert Judit), his works feature distorted, asymmetric faces and bodies, whose representations often drift towards a near‑abstract realm. In exploring the timeless questions that touch the human essence, he continually reverts to the portrayal of flesh, to human‑monster hybridities and to the inner struggles and states of being that he presents. One of his most emblematic motifs is the mask, which can be a symbol of withdrawal or expression, a means of depicting archetypes. Behind each portrayal of the human, he evokes and re‑forms thoughts that cross ages and cultures, giving rise to the mythical and ritual atmosphere of his art. Among his numerous exhibitions, his solo show *The Age of Pantheons* at the Műcsarnok in 2018 stands out, where he primarily displayed his sculptural practice. With his latest work he returned to a technique he had long abandoned. In a new series he created collages from fragments of his own finished and unfinished paintings, thereby reflecting the endless processes of construction and demolition, of layering and erasing. In contrast to the mythic, archaic approach he has used before, this work leads us into the present labyrinth of the psyche: the relationship between body and soul, the changing bodily image of modern man, the schizoid state of identity fractures, and the crisis of the decentralised personalities that mark our era. The assembled bodies in his images also evoke puppets, automata and their modern incarnations, the sprites of the cyber‑bird, with which Gaál further develops the thoughts on masks and prostheses that have appeared in his earlier works.

New Art