József Gaál (1960) is a fine artist, arts writer and a professor at the University of Fine Arts.
The key works displayed at the present exhibition – for which we borrowed the title from the artist’s early, three-part lithograph made in 1991 – are the leather heads called Marsyas Figures, the Hermae, Macula and Imagio series, as well as pieces from Bello Brutto and Transhuman Fetish. At the exhibition occupying three halls visitors can also see sculptures from Gaál’s latest series titled Persona Umbra, which, similarly to the earlier works, are mainly made of wood, leather and metal. In accordance with the artist’s intention, this exhibition is a kind of retrospective, as it also includes earlier works; its opening piece, Great Moloch, was completed in 1988.
József Gaál’s essay, published in the exhibition catalogue, allows an insight into the artist’s creative method and the unique approach he takes to art: “My works direct my everyday life, creating what could be called a somatic cause and effect mechanism. My inner network of references is an organism in which paradoxical contents can co-exist and seemingly incongruous forms are melded with new meaning. My works, which i experience as my own past, want to exist in a mythical, archaic permanence, not under the magic spell of political or artistic ideology but in a permanence spanning periods.”
The exhibition presenting József Gaál’s works, including his latest pieces, will be opened by art historian Judit Szeifert in the Műcsarnok/Kunsthalle on 20 September 2018.
Curator: Mária Kondor-Szilágyi