joy,
desire and hate, violence and weakness, brutality, and the list could go
on almost forever, expanded or narrowed down ad infinitum. These
are Szirtes’s’ basic themes, in short the world. Performance, as a form
of artistic activity in the Seventies, was not a frequent phenomenon in
Budapest. It really gained legitimacy as a form of artistic expression
through the work of Miklós Erdély. With slightly ironic exaggeration
we might even say that from the late-Sixties on Erdély’s whole life
was a continuous performance. His impact on Szirtes is also of decisive
significance. His influence on Szirtes, too, was of decisive import, albeit
at the same time it was for him an important instrument of artistic expression
since 1972 and possibly the most important from the Eighties on.
The number of his performances still outstrips that of his exhibitions
even today, which is definitely an important signal. In spite of this nobody
can think of Szirtes primarily as a performer. We speak here of forms of
activity totally on a par, indeed I would not even risk it to say that
they are complementary, auxiliary or meant to strike a balance in the fashion
of Gesamtkunstwerk. Under closer scrutiny we shall see that his performance
requisites never become objects of art directly with Szirtes, despite the
fact that the instruments and elements used are frequently identical with
what he uses, say, in his painting. Thus, when he uses fire and smoke in
the framework of action, this is never the same as, for instance, in the
case of paintings made using soot and smoke. The sound material of the
performance is not identical with his own music. In short, the various
activities simply run parallel rather than complement each other. Naturally,
we are speaking of the different works of one and the same artist.
The soot pictures of the early-Nineties realised the same concealment,
cover-up theme in the realm of painting as the smudged masks used in performance
with the help of an entirely different mode of visual expression. In regard
to these examples concealment rather than the re-interpretation of ethnographic
or cave painting topos is the central motive of Szirtes’s various activities.
Underneath the soot picture there is the other, the “real” one, albeit
it cannot be seen (it must not be seen, it is not worth seeing, it is a
shame that I cannot see it), but I know that it is there. The same
holds true in the same way - and differently - with the mask. Everything
that can be seen is real and yet is not the real thing, but who knows what
real is like and what embodies it any more. A fairly characteristic
and real experience from the turn of the Eighties and Nineties, and not
only in the realm of art.
With the new series of pictures - Tree Lying - Crystal Lying - which initially quickly captures attention Szirtes has created something entirely and radically different than hitherto in a way that in doing so everything refers back to his earlier pictures. Its immediate forerunner - precursor and protagonist - was his exhibition entitled Action — Painting in January 1996 at the Bartók 32 Gallery. Szirtes used water colour to paint the huge pictures. On the one hand this is a major feat in terms of painting technique, since by nature water colour is not the genre of large dimensions and Szirtes produced pictures 17 by 2 metres in size. “Gesture lives on and continues to grow on damp paper. It evolves. In other words what it is about is that I draw something — a line say — and then something happens to it when it gets into that kind of environment. It starts to live its own life ... gesture encounters a material still entwined in its own life.” (Action-Painting. István Antal talks to János Szirtes. Balkon, 1-2/1996, p. 33.). Similarly, this vivid solution, one that continues to evolve itself, is also what we see in the new series. Obviously, a fundamental difference in the technical sense is that now canvas and ink, with oil, are the two actors as opposed to paper and water paint. Yet here, too, gesture’s independent life as motive fully prevails.
Gesture itself has changed a great deal. Whereas in earlier periods the process of the act of painting itself indubitably played an important role, so much so that the finished object almost ranked as documentation of the process, now concentration applies to the painting itself. He painted for painting’s sake. Accordingly, the scribble-like, slightly improvised lines, the totemistic signs, or, say, the multi-layer prints, the gesture forms have disappeared. Their role has been taken over by tree and tree branch forms of an almost “crystal structure” guided extremely consciously and with meticulous care. They are black on white, almost geometrical formations permeated through and through from time to time by white (the background) as some kind of peculiar fluid. Winter pictures, dead trees, with red (the sun, blood) spots. The trees are in a lying position. This entire literary description does not, however, mean that Szirtes has shifted towards some kind of nature delineation. The spectacle is geometric albeit amorphous.
Naturally, the exhibition still continues to function as an installation whole. Alongside the paintings the large black crystal - metal sculpture - provides contrast, the black hole, a monolith. It is there and yet it is not there. More precisely, it is the opposite of Jovánovics’s Large Column, which dominated and possessed space. This is present in a way that it is almost not even there. The ensemble - the pictures and the sculpture - constitute an extremely grave and static unity. Obviously, Szirtes would not be who he is unless he broke this majestic unity with a dynamic gesture, thereby creating a new, different kind of equilibrium. Rendered infinite on a monumental video projector in space a performance takes place to an extremely slow rhythm. Two beings - two girls, are approaching each other with slow, measured movements, with steadily intensifying passion, caressing one another as astral. They almost have no gender, meaning that the protracted string of scenes make for genuinely beautiful movements rather than operating as porno films tend to, with imitated desire. The soft string of gestures then become wilder and wilder, eventually turning into brutality. The signal system is extremely human, at once erotic and neutral. The flow of infinitely slow movements and fine noises fills the space. Yet again, Szirtes is worthy of Szirtes.
Péter Fitz