Anna Regős’s textile works combine a love of patterns, a bold use of materials and found elements with a confident knowledge of contemporary art and design. Her systematic application of patterns as well as the harmony and playfulness of colours help viewers to reflect upon her pictures, inviting them to discover and decipher the layers of meaning hidden in these structures.
Our exhibition Quoting Patterns offers a retrospective overview of the key junctures in Anna Regős’s creative path, with the primary emphasis placed on her autonomous works. At the same time, it is important to note that her design work is equally significant in her oeuvre. Developing in parallel, these two have been complementing and reinforcing each other. As the artist herself notes, periods devoted to design work have always been followed by periods of autonomous creation. This alternating rhythm is reflected in the dating of the artist’s autonomous textiles, lending the oeuvre as a whole an organic pattern and cadence.
Her earliest autonomous works were inspired by Japanese art, not only in terms of motifs but also in their underlying approach.
In the early nineties, Regős created several series that differ from one another in their forms and motifs but share a significant characteristic: a connection to artistic traditions and the evocation of techniques or visual elements from earlier periods.
It was also in the early nineties that Regős began working on her Computer Tapestry series, made on a bronze or steel mesh base, reinforced with a linen layer, and using appliqués composed of computer parts. These elements made using plastic and metal parts, wire coils and tiny panels follow a certain pattern to create the pattern structure of the tapestry. The use of technical parts and materials foreign to the fine arts has become increasingly common in contemporary art. Printed circuit boards appeared as a characteristic motif in Lili Ország’s iconostases in the early 1970s, as well as in her 1974 magnum opus, the Labyrinth series. After their brief acquaintance, Ilona Keserü dedicated a work, also executed on a printed circuit board, to her: Üzenet Ország Lilinek [Message to Lili Ország].
The tapestry series made in the late 1990s used deep blue linen as a base, onto which colourful fabric segments were applied through folding and stitching, arranged into a grid-like structure with rivets. In these works, the titles help understanding and visual reception. Folding as a technique also appears in a later series by Anna Regős. There are numerous other examples of works made using folding in Hungarian fine arts, from painting (Simon Hantaï employed the technique starting with his Mariales series) to experimental film (Dóra Maurer: Időmérés [Timing]).
In the early 2000s, the forms in Regős’s pictures underwent some change, although she continued using the main components: dark blue linen, colourful fabric fields and rivets. With the retreat of colour, the structure created by rivets becomes far more pronounced, forming a regular raster grid.
In the 2012 series, the outward appearance of the works was supplemented with a new element: the use of plexiglass covers, providing a frame, thus creating an exhibition context and a formal artistic stance.
By 2017, the nearly square format had become a constant in Anna Regős’s works, with the pleated linen giving rise to various colour gradients and forms, such as in Pastel Gradient, Cubes, and Stripes.
Although it is the most recent work of the oeuvre, visitors are greeted at the exhibition by the spatial textile Safety Net (2024), which won first prize and earned Anna Regős the title of Textile Artist of the Year at the VIII. International Triennial of Textile Arts.
curator: Mária Kondor-Szilágyi