“Under the bell jar of the lonely road, I have never been interested in trends, tendencies, or vogues; I never even considered joining any artistic group and, as opposed to Tradition, I have never felt inclined to ferment the intellectual undersoil of my own work with impulses from contemporary art,” Miklós Szőcs TUI declares[1] with that self-confident determination which has practically defined his career from the outset to the present day.
Miklós Szőcs TUI was born in Budapest in 1953. He completed his secondary education by correspondence and evening classes. In his youth, he tried out several professions, working as a mechanical technician as well as in a graphic studio. He was admitted to the Hungarian College of Fine Arts in 1974, but the strict academic framework did not suit him, so he left the institution after a short while. His decision meant that his artistic beginnings would not follow the direction of some renowned master but lonely experimentations and explorations. He strove hard for years to develop his use of material and his approach, from shaping simpler objects to the ever more sophisticated sculptural challenges.
His emerging artworks would long retain their utilitarian functions – their applied-art character, so to say: toys, rocking horses, chess figures, marionettes, furniture items were made in his studio. Formally speaking, these straddled the boundary between realistic depiction and fantasy; their figurativeness was complemented by a subtle ornamental quality. TUI’s material preference has always consistently related to wood: the natural network, the colours and textures provide him with the chief means of expression. He has a predilection for special, rare, sometimes highly expensive woods while also processing blocks of plywood in various ways. His objects, vessels, furniture items no longer gain their meaning through utility; their peculiar atmosphere is created by the sculptural force of the surfaces and the dynamics of light and shadow; in the course of time, he has increasingly given way to the desire also to make them carriers of transcendental ideas.
An early journey to Thailand back in the 1980s had a defining impact on TUI’s artistic development. There, he was faced with the fact that artworks never exist in isolation: everything is embedded in some cultural-artistic environment, which provides it with meaning and background. This discovery further deepened his interest in the traditions of religious and intellectual history. The sources of his art spring forth from Eastern and Western high cultures simultaneously; he does not merely quote or follow those traditions but explores their permeability, the openings for a free flow of ideas between them. He has no exclusive affiliation with any religious denomination or intellectual school; his approach is syncretic, based on the notion that deep down below divergent systems of ideas lies a common fundament, which can be expressed visually.
In the 1990s, his most characteristic motifs were animal shapes (zebra, tortoise, frog, iguana, baboon, cheetah, etc.) elaborated in multifarious ways. That series culminated at around the turn of the millennium in TUI’s most famous masterpiece, the Jaguar. The viewer might not even guess that the creation of the vibrant wooden grid – which makes the animal sculpture both ethereal and dynamic – is preceded by plasticine modelling, whose meticulous freehand replica is the finished, carved version that emerges.
Its elaborately shaped, hollow character represents on the visual level a concept crucial for TUI; namely, that the body is the “soul’s vessel,” and the soul is “God’s vessel,” apparent in numerous religions. “For some time, my works have by and large been vessels,” TUI explains, “which, despite any and all formal attractiveness of theirs, may but manifest the cameo, the shell of the higher, invisible force field revealing itself in them, and my two-headed figurative works intend to make perceptible the same balanced harmony of the unity or wholeness revealing itself in the oppositions of diversity. To this end, I strife for conceptual purity and technical perfection.”[2]
From 2000 onwards, he focused ever more sharply on increasingly abstract forms more resistant to verbalization. Although he never completely denounced figurativeness, his works have become ever more abstract carriers of meaning. The visual connection between Book of the Living (2007) with the book as an object is quite immediate; potential interpretations are informed by the title, an associative opposition to the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The works in the Knot series, created from the 2010s onwards, have an increasingly hidden symbolic content; a more thorough contemplation of the work is required if the viewer wants to decipher the ideas behind its elemental beauty. The titles and the interpretative passages by the artist may help that process.
Miklós Szőcs TUI has been a member of the Art Fund since 1984. He held his first solo exhibition in 1991 at the Institut Français in Budapest; since then, he has participated in many solo and group exhibitions. He was enrolled as a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts in 2012, he is a full member today. His achievements earned him the Munkácsy Mihály Prize in 2015; the Prima Primissima Prize in 2021, and the Kossuth Prize in 2024. He continues to live and work in Budapest, devoted to the artistic direction pointed out to him by his inner motives as well as the universal experience of traditions.
Zoltán Rockenbauer,
Curator of the exhibition
[1] Szőcs, Miklós TUI: A művészet aranyfedezete a kiküzdött emberi minőség. [The gold standard of art is the human quality achieved.] Interview by Eszter Fábián. Magyar Hírlap, June 13, 2023 https://www.magyarhirlap.hu/muveszpaholy/20230613-szocs-miklos-tui-a-muveszet-aranyfedezete-a-kikuzdott-emberi-minoseg?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[2] Quoted in Kinga Gerencsér, Rendhagyó, különös és titokzatos [Extraordinary, Peculiar, and Enigmatic]. Miklós Szőcs TUI, Kossuth, Munkácsy, and Prima Primissima Prize winning sculptor, full member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts, in Conversation. Faipar, December 16, 2024 https://faipar.hu/cikkek/portre/10612/rendhagyo-kueloenoes-es-titokzatos