Tamási Claudia: Hatás-vadász

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An exhibition resurrected from Godot Gallery’s original WordPress archive.

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Self‑portrait for Roy Lichtenstein, 24 × 30, acrylic, ink, canvas, 2008

Self‑portrait by Arnulf Rainer, 24x30, acrylic, ink, canvas, 2008

Self‑portrait of David Hockney, 24x30, acrylic, pen, canvas, 2008

Tamási Claudia’s double exhibition

Claudia Tamási's double exhibition

Mixed / Mixture

Ericsson Gallery

Opening: 2008 May 28. 17h

Impact hunter / Sensationalist

Godot Gallery

Opening: 2008 May 28. 19h

Alongside the two opening receptions the artist’s new English‑Hungarian catalogue appears in the same period, titled Tamási Claudia 2003‑2008, to which the study was written by Csizmadia Alexa.

The new artbook of the painter with the title of Tamási Claudia 2003‑2008 will be published on the occasion of this double vernissage. Its essay was written by Alexa Csizmadia and it is also English and Hungarian.

This is good now (you and I with Liz Taylor and Paul Newman), 70x100, acrylic, canvas, 2007

Alexa Csizmadia: Vaguely via a Mirror

Mórika, according to an old joke, always thinks of the same thing about every topic. Tamási Claudia does not fall into the trap of self‑repetition, yet she is always able to speak consistently about the same thing; about a woman’s place and social role, whether she is the artist herself or an allegory depicted in a child’s picture.

The self‑portrait, this repeatedly reinventing art form of several hundred years, offers a chance to probe my own limits and to reflect on the individual cast into society. Experiments in self‑definition appear in Tamási Claudia’s canvases at the intersection of the private sphere and social identity. In this way her series *Is it now good?* and *Perhaps she?* measure themselves against the icons of a culture dominated by celebrities, matching the representations that appear in the media with a gentle lightness while attempting to obediently blend into consumer culture. The result is a cheerful, festive critique of society that draws attention to the unavoidable creation of the female ideal by the media and its portrayal as a model, and of course to what we have known since post‑modernism: that our personality, or what we imagine it to be, is shaped and determined by our place in society. Our neighbours, like countless other supporting figures, write the fiction of our identity.

14 m2 V., 40 x 33, acrylic, parquet, 2005-06

According to Jacques Lacan’s mirror‑theory, in the early stages of development we first perceive the unity of our own body by looking into the mirror, yet we identify with it as the “Other”. Later, in a similar fashion, we experience identification with the images of others, while our self‑image is shaped through a long series of subordinations. If we extend Lacan’s analogy to the specific works of the *Is it right now?* and *Or perhaps she?* series, we may even recognise the mirror of ourselves in the painted skins of celebrities concealed by an unnamed female painter.

Redefining identity, as with the post‑modern characteristics of the representation of mass‑culture icons and the so‑called elite culture within a single framework, is an issue. Cindy Sherman's well‑known fictitious film stills (Untitled Film Stills 1977‑1980) examine the collapse of female roles into stereotypical patterns in film. Tamási Claudia's satires, when considered in terms of her approach, can be linked to the works of her great forerunners, as they operate on a similar principle; they use the media‑mediated image of the woman as a starting point, and then largely draw the roles offered by it for themselves. In the formation of our identity, the images radiated by the media undoubtedly play a part, but the media and the visually dominated world that surrounds us remains a patriarchal territory in which the woman's field of movement is narrow; in the media the typically masculinized fictive idealised image of the woman appears as the object of desire in the passive roles allocated to her. In the case of Tamási Claudia's portraits the fact that the artist treats the subject as a woman changes the reading. Though Tamási is not counted among the artists representing the feminist discourse (still surrounded by suspicion in Hungary) whose topics can rightly be held accountable for an approach coming from that direction.

Fertilisation, 70x50, acrylic, plexiglass, plastic, canvas, 2004

In his latest self‑portraits dedicated to contemporary artists, Tamási once again transforms himself, this time adopting a playful technique of finger‑strokes to absorb the stylistic traits of the chosen creators, painting their faces from what he imagines their perspective to be. This painterly “you wrote thus” offers a chance to glitter the craft knowledge, a sort of reward game, a little ear‑to‑ear trick that surprises the artist with a café‑corner twist. One could also think of József Attila when reflecting on the result, or at least a gossip surface. That surface, however, does not indicate superficiality but merely the surface itself, for which Andy Warhol put it in an interview: “If you want to know everything about Warhol, look at the surface of my paintings, my films and myself, and you will already find me standing before you. Behind all of this there is nothing.” In other words, the emphasis is on the surface and the work’s semantic meaning is confined to it as well. The Pop Art shouted at symbolic meanings. It merely zooms in on selected elements from society and material culture and shows them in new light through either magnification or repetition, but without a conceptual framework and the artist does not weigh the images behind them, as Barthes noticed, which turns out to be a stereotype in itself. Pop Art usually changes our perception; it simplifies, magnifies, and highlights. In this respect, Tamási Claudia is the heir to Pop Art, most evident in the Ajkaim series. In his black‑and‑white paintings dedicated to artists, however, he adds another twist: he also regards the artists as interchangeable objects and reduces them to their hand‑prints. He does not interfere with their works, he merely studies and handles their formal traits, their surfaces, as a mimicry, transposing them into the spirit of pop.

Tamási Claudia’s every painting is consistently a self‑portrait, even when she places babies or sensual flowers on the camera instead of herself (so that, by mentioning the camera as a photographic element, we also pick up a reference to photorealistic representation). While in the series *Is this good now?* and *Or perhaps she?* she hides behind the mimics of celebrities, her new, art‑historical‑reference practice is not only performed as a woman but as an artist, choosing not feminine but artistic models. With each new painting the question strengthens; who, in fact, is Tamási Claudia?

Alcohol‑tinted felt, 70x50, alcohol‑tinted felt, PLEXTOL, acrylic, cellulose, canvas, 2004

Ericsson Gallery

1037 Budapest, Laborc Street 1

www.ericsson.com/hu

Open on workdays

Godot Gallery

1075 Budapest, Madách Street 8

archive.godot.hu

A kiállítás megtekinthető 2008. június 21-ig keddtől péntekig 10 és 18, szombaton 10 és 13 óra között / Open till 21 June, 2008 from Tuesday to Friday between 10 am and 6 pm, on Saturday between 10 am and 1 pm.

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