Tamási Claudia

The Godot Gallery

Respectfully invites you

Tamási Claudia

KAMUFLEKK – Turning point

to the opening of the exhibition titled ___

2003 March 19 at 20.

The exhibition is opened by: Eszter Radák, painter.

The exhibition is open on weekdays from 10 to 18 until 18.

Representatives of a *realistic representation* include Tamási Claudia, although this is only partly true of her, since her images, though enriched with realistic elements, are largely distant from *reality*. The graduating artist from the Academy of Fine Arts this year, her first striking works, the Ajkaim, also reflect Lakner László's emblematic hyper‑realist work *Száj*. Thus this body part is no longer only Lakner's trademark, but also Tamási's. Lakner's mustached lips have, through enlargement, almost entirely lost their original fidelity, appearing more as a terrain landscape. Tamási Claudia's large‑scale, multi‑view painted lips echo the predecessor’s work, yet even after magnification the mouth‑like quality remains. The exaggeratedly unrealised lips are almost repellent; the breathing pores, wrinkles, skin fissures, and the taste buds sprouting on the tongue turn the observer into a terrified Gulliver, confronted in this realm of giants with female body parts that to date have only been seen as desirable on a small scale. The Ajkaim could also be seen as a documentation of metacommunication practices, with the various viewpoints, tilts suggesting different moods and emotional states. Both the title and the visual of the Ajkaim carry an association with the female sexual organ. All parts of the 12‑piece series entered private collections; one of them appeared on the front cover of Blitz Galéria’s 2002 spring auction catalogue.

In his latest works he once again turns to detail. After the “mouth” series, he now, under the title Kamuflekk (Spot as a painter’s surface), essentially carries out studies of hand and material. The images in the series show hand‑heads rendered in bold colour and with a relatively high degree of precision, viewed from various angles, each always connected to a very material‑like form that rises from the dense paint – perhaps reminiscent of yoghurt. For the great bulk of the picture the flatness that gives a three‑dimensional illusion stands sharply in contrast with the foreign material’s thick, flaky trail of paint that projects from the surface. The bulging, robust material is not aesthetically striking, yet it encourages touch; that is why its marks are continually found on the hand, the very instrument of touch.

At the opening of the exhibition, the Godot Gallery will present the artist’s first catalogue.