Kopasz Tamás

We respectfully invite you to the opening of Tamás Kopasz’s exhibition “…reneszánsz…” on 2001 September 26 at 20 o’clock. The opening will be given by art‑historian Majoros Valéria Vanília.

Last year, Tamás Kopasz, the recipient of the Munkácsy Award, held an exhibition titled … reneszánsz.., which is in part a synthesis of the passionate, frenzied works characteristic of his output in the eighties, and the emotionless, cold pieces that emerged in the nineties, both in material choice and in their presentation.

His creative periods form a cohesive whole, easy to distinguish both in theme and in material choice. His first major works are the Love‑Images (1986), rough‑surfaced, de‑composed pieces that hint at a struggle with the material and the “primitivist” fight inherent in the subject. The subsequent cycles (Golden Age, Bronze Age, Copper Age 1986‑88) are likewise marked by austerity in surface treatment, painting style, and material selection, reflecting nostalgia for the simple, “primitive”, and Arcadian world.

After the Brass Period, Kopasz returned to materials with rough surfaces, and in the series titled Ornamentika spatiality comes to the fore together with a detached mode of depiction. A prominent feature of the works *Shields* and *Feminine Images* is the overly gestured gesture, along with the emergence of the cutting technique, the creation of three‑dimensional pieces by distorting the image, relief surfaces, and the flat surfaces opened up by cutting. In his phases of the nineties – (Rolló, Paper Images) on the one hand are characterised by complex techniques, and (Clouds, Landscapes) by the pigment that alternates between them – and iron painting marks a return to rough, austere forms and a delivery devoid of passion. The material of the exhibition opening in September 26 is, like a substantial portion of Kopasz’s work, non‑representational; it is rather “the material, pictorial rendering of inner emotions and thoughts”.

Each of the exhibited paintings and sculptures is a member of a series; the sculptures are constructed from groups of three elements. The images that continue the exhibition titled …révület… serve as reference, while the iron and gypsum sculptures can be seen as the “plastic protrusions” of the paintings. Their basis, like the earlier works, is a bent form—whether a circle or a sphere—marking a departure from the elongated shapes of the previous sculptures. Traditionally the circle and sphere symbolize perfection; in Kopasz Tamás’s work they instead suggest enclosure, the gesture of being “locked within a sphere”, a symbol of thought. Some of the irregular, unfinished circular sculptures echo a bit the suppressed, struggle‑laden tension of the embryonic stage, a state where the nascent life is no longer safe—part due to the absence of a closed form, part because of the tangled, frayed nets that swirl within.

The statues also recall the helmets used in combat. A piece of metalwork resembling a shield has already been used for Kopasznál, which—just like the helmet in battle—typically is not an offensive tool but a means of defence, shielding the person behind it.

The sculptures are characterised by duality, and by the confrontation of opposites – on the one hand the defence against combat outside the “sisakon” versus the struggle within the “sisakon”; on the other the duality arising from the materials, iron and plaster, the clash of roughness and softness, hardness and pliancy.

The works on display are truly syntheses of the artist’s previous oeuvre, balancing the opposing forces of passion and restraint.

The exhibition can be viewed from 2001 until October 26.