Gaál József

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The Godot Gallery warmly invites you

József Gaál

Carved Pictures

for its jubilee exhibition titled

Opening: 2010 on 30 April at 20 o’clock.

Opening: Noémi Szabó, art historian

Available until: May 22.

Gaál József’s newest plastic series is a set of Sculpted Images that have been continuously produced since 2008, which, apart from his earlier understanding, are painted wooden reliefs positioned on the boundary between painting and sculpture. Just as in his portrait cycles, these painted reliefs too have, step by step, been replaced – in place of the balloon‑like, detached figures – by ordinary people who reflect the fine tremors of the soul and radiate meaning and emotion; simple, war‑wounded villagers weathered by hardship, or simply looking straight at a sandy, barren field.

At the very outset of Gaál József’s persistent and stubborn artistic enquiry, the same question looms, whether one is looking at any stylistic change in his oeuvre: it is this relentless, ongoing search. Drawing on his own analogy, the process of creating a work is likeliest compared to the layers of an onion: the artist reaches the knot that symbolises its essence, when the onion’s adhesive yet separable layers peel away in sequence. It was thereby the ordinary catharsis that took the place of the majestic one; in place of the supposed universal, timeless conclusions the search turned to banal, epiphanic and everyday experiences of existence. What may appear reductive from an intellectual standpoint when it comes to his portraits (there are no complex, mythological‑symbolic sign systems; the titles of the cycles are also simplified), was instead an enrichment of the visual solutions from a stylistic point of view. His portraits, in fact, handle the surface far more freely and fluidly, creating the possibility of exploiting the rich expressive power of the fleeting impression and gesture.

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The artist receives support from the National Cultural Basic Programme.