Exhibition of Mária Flóra Zoltán

Curated by Krisztina Jerger, Ildikó D. Udvary Artists are sleepwalkers - they have no sense of the void that they cross over. I mean this literally - the void is the freedom of the artist. It is scary - there is nobody to share the responsibility with about how and what to paint. There is no solitude in the universe comparable to that of the artist, when they find what to paint and define the brushstrokes and colors in the image. And there is no such thing as: the brushstroke should be a little otherwise or the colors to be slightly colder or warmer or different. A moment of fading attention or a flawed decision about the color is enough to ruin the image - or make it insignificant and its all the same whether it exists or not. And this can be taken as the fall from the tightrope stretched over the waters of the Seven Seas, this tightrope is the spot where one has to practice to achieve a confidence in painting. Even if this analogy doesn´t fit, since within the conditions of clemency any image can be repaired that is already a completely different painting. There are more than one solution for painting a good painting, but the artist must find it themselves. In this case talent is great support, but its useless in making the decision about how to climb through the Magic Mountain, how to take courage and fight the seven-headed dragon or having stamina to go on even if it seems we are lost in the wild forest and while still bleeding from a hundred wounds, still bear with the pain. Fortunately, the artist is rewarded with the pleasure and joy of art-making, which is plain simply like love itself. (It is indeed true that when we finally achieve love we might already be disillusioned; analogously, by the time the painting is finished it may turn out to be a bad one. Yet I still believe in the tightrope-dance and the growing confidence it provides in making better pictures.) In conclusion, were the artist aware of the infinite freedom he has, he would feel vertigo and fail to even begin. Mária Flóra Zoltán