Szikora Tamás: Eltűnő dobozok

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An exhibition salvaged from the original WordPress archive of the Godot Gallery.

Full exhibition text

In larger size

Rembrandt III.

43 x 92, oil on wood, 1992

private collection

The Godot Gallery warmly invites you.

Tamás Szikora

Vanishing Boxes

for the memorial exhibition titled

The exhibition is organised by: Gaál József.

Opening: 2015. October 14 at 20 o'clock

Opening: Dr György Kepecs, collector and friend

Open: from Tuesday to Friday until December 15 at 9 and 14, and on Saturday between 10 and 13.

The Godot Gallery wishes to pay tribute to the late Tamás Szikora (1943-2012), who had been part of the gallery’s team for many years. In the gallery, we are presenting a selection from 12 in its own collection – including works from the artist’s estate – that spans Szikora’s distinctive box motif from the middle of the 80‑s to the very last years.

In larger size

Two boxes with a yellow perspective.

32 × 46, oil, wheat board, 1992

private collection

Szikora, during his career, received several creation awards: in 1992 he was awarded the Salgótarján biennial painting grand prize, and in 1994 his artistic achievement was recognised with the Munkácsy Mihály Award. In 2006 he received the Pro Cultura Urbis prize and the Herczeg Klára (senior) prize, and in 2010 he was chosen as a worthy artist. Some other biographical details from his exceptionally colourful career: from 1985 to 1986 he was an invited teacher at the Hungarian Art and Industrial School, from 1990 he was a member of the Szentendre Old Artists' Colony, from 1992 to 1993 he spent one and a half years in the Paris Cité des Arts with support from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and from 1992 he works in Paris for two months each year, at the Cité des Arts.

Méltatói:

Katalin Néray, 1987:

I first encountered Tamás Szikora’s leading box‑object under very mysterious circumstances: the work was found in the basement of the street studio of Fegyvernek, literally in the studio loft, because the studio apartment had become too cramped. Until then I had only seen other boxes at the Óbuda Cellar Gallery, represented as old diplomas with calligrapher‑inked edgework and wax seals, and I was reminded of Gérard Titus‑Carmel’s delicate drawings. The motif, re‑animated on a poorly lit floor, was a two‑metre‑wide cardboard object that resembled a sci‑fi set.

I immediately asked Szikora to exhibit this otherwise disassemblable installation with its accompanying drawings at the São Paulo Biennale.

It happened in 1985, unfortunately none of our compatriots attended the mentioned Biennale; we only heard indirectly from the organisers that the Hungarian material was a success. The result could also be seen by the Hungarian audience in the Salamon Tower in Visegrád and at the Bartók 32 Gallery in Budapest.

A task from Szikora Tamás’s creative seed invigorated this endeavour, and it continued to be "boxed." He produced yet another, more monumental object than before, and extended the theme to the painting he had abandoned for years. Eight‑ten boxed images rushed out of his hand in a few months, heavy, ranging from brown to black, compositions that suggested both the liberated joy of painting and the disciplinary storm.

When Frank János and I went outside the studio to look at the finished material, I felt the same pleasant excitement that I had when I first saw the cardboard box on the floor. Again something good had been born, and the positive emotions of preparing for the exhibition drove Szikora to demanding and focused work.

In larger format

Byzantium

52 x 34. pastel, collage, 2009

jewel collection

Passuth Krisztina, 1993:

Boxes cannot always be opened. Some can, others cannot; some maintain their untouched state throughout, others prefer to reveal their secrets, the system accumulated within, while still others simply flaunt their closed shadows, unable to be approached. Boxes in space, boxes on a plane, playing the space, the third dimension, with illusionistic realism, projecting the nonexistent shadow with a disheartening fidelity, only for it to later sharply separate from the wall, unframed, creating the limits of its own autonomous world.

Gellér Katalin, 2001:

"His first independent period saw him align with the international stream of expressive painting; he turned to French and Spanish‑Catalan masters, then forged a variant of neo‑geometry that, in terms of minimal art and motif selection, also approaches arte poverá. 1991 –, his commitment to the spatial order he established, accompanies him throughout his career; the 20‑century Hungarian creators now begin an artistic path that can be deemed fated: he works on the shaping and variations of a single image, into which influences ranging from Renaissance perspective studies to the legacy of Russian and Hungarian constructivism are incorporated.

The starting motif is geometry, and elevating the photograph into an individual structure is not only a high‑order intellectual achievement but also an outstanding contemporary example of vigorous shaping and ever‑renewing painterliness. In his works the signs of expressive painterliness appear from time to time, something that Kállai Ernő once regarded with such convincing argument as one of the main characteristics of Hungarian masters. It is also this quality that marks the newly devised search for tradition observed among master artists of the generation born in the forties: the transcription of motifs and structures rooted in the century’s painting traditions to their extreme points.

The tendency to gradually deviate from the stringent rules of optics, and initially within geometric forms, it was still possible to touch emotions, to allude to different human fates, to evoke memory, but even then the new order of spatial arrangement and the subjectivisation of perspective were what dominated. A characteristic feature of the character is that even in a world seen as ruined and hopeless, the construction was not abandoned; in the fragment, in the stack of everyday life, the visual order that presents the whole was created, which even shows its illusionistic, manipulatable nature.

In a larger scale

Black‑red picture

45 × 56, acrylic, pastel, paper, 2008

personal collection

Ottó Tolnai, 2007

As Tamás gathers old lace, cardboard, especially old documents, the bulletproof cardboard of old book covers, his papundeklijeit, tablets, vellum paper… Kecskemét itself is already collecting material for him, his pictures, he tells. And me, the copyist, this is what interests me most, but as a critic I also see a path for myself, indeed, Tamás’s full‑blown statement, those who collect, what they collect for him, yes, I must travel to Kecskemét, I must get to know the collectors and carriers of the material of boxes, pictures… His most loyal assistant, he tells Tamás, is Veron Veronika, the best, the Munkácsy‑award‑winning Hungarian paper restorer… And the Kecskemét picture frame‑maker, the young sculptress, the Berlin‑style teacher who conducts a baton, also collect for me, Tamás continues… They bring wonderfully mature lace, boards, leather, rag‑paper, full of karistolás, cuts, mature wounds, stitch, loaded with lead‑ball jars, darkened, absolutely twisted, like Zurbarán’s backgrounds, like Hantai (Simon)’s pictures… But I also received sweet‑bagged and Domino boxes, and someone gave me a female‑covered box from the Black Sea, God, a female‑covered box from the Black Sea, and I let him begin to tell, how all this turned into a picture, how that female‑covered box from the Black Sea became a crematorium, a pyramid‑shaped thing, I feel, it’s there, I managed to seize this secret of art…

In larger size

Low box

150 × 120, oil, canvas, 1988

personal collection

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