Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 27. (Budapest, 2009)

Márta KOVALOVSZKY: Unfinished Process

saw this piece. After her beautiful textiles of previous years, decorated with mirrors and old spangles, and her unspun wool embroidery, she was now discovering a self-evident, but nonetheless surprising property of textile materials and textile techniques. As an experienced craft artist, she saw not only the capability of covering the surface with patterns or cunning tricks, she also understood that in so doing the real piece was covered up or concealed or even transformed, reinterpreted or even done away with. When she covered the gas mask with coloured yarn, she symbolically "disarmed" the military object. When she applied a green and white striped cover to everyday objects - chair, table, television, guitar, book, umbrella - she inhibited their normal operation, "sent them on holiday" 4. Mariann Szabó Halál [Death], 1975 (detail of Path of Life) Coarse linen, textile sculpture Canvas, tapestry weave, 170 x 160 x 50 cm {Huzat [Cover], 1976).

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2 (Fig. 5) When she covered the furniture in a room with hessian, she rendered their outlines uncertain and mysterious, and relativised the space {Cella, 1977)." Her raw material remained textile - wool, canvas, jute - but behind its surface, in the shadowy bays of wrinkles and crushes, were whispers of extraordinary associations and disturbing thoughts on solitude, remoteness, the possibility of changing things, freedom. The wide-eyed viewer was satisfied to note how close the philosophy behind these pieces was to the contemporary work of Miklós 159