Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 27. (Budapest, 2009)
Márta KOVALOVSZKY: Unfinished Process
satin canvas, cellophane strips and silver foil sheets in the space, creating a strange, severe labyrinth which awoke the entering visitor to the occasionally translucent, but essentially opaque mysteries of spatial depth. Efforts also continued to explore the structure of the composition or certain of its details. Of the generation who came to maturity in the seventies, it is Csilla Kelecsényi whose activity stands out. Coloured strands stretched in a frame and the impression of the knife which cut them, tension raised to extremes, and the "wound" caused by the cut, brought a new element into the world of textiles: drama. Her "fibre cuts" of around 1976-1977 already carried the dramatic, theatrical power which was to come to fruition in her Kőszeg installation of the 1980s. In the hands of the young artists, the usual materials of textile work sometimes obligingly revealed new properties. Anikó Bajkó degraded fine silk with acids, arranged it in several layers and shone light through them ( Áttetszőség [Translucence], 1976; 1 6 Áttetsző kotnpozíeió I-III [Translucent composition I-III], 1977),' and so discovered visual effects hitherto unknown in the art form, and her experiences later led to her "textile cemetery" pictures in Mohács. She dipped bunches of sisal and gauze veils in floor varnish, arranged the wet material, which preserved her movements after drying. Preserved? The tiny details certainly, but as a whole, it moved on to a different plane, the realm of some strange choreography where gestures, shadows and ghost-figures frozen in the air play out their chilling dance. Gecser's life-size veil-figures (R-sorozat [Series R], 1983)at the start of the next decade went well beyond the narrow world of experimentation in material, and became real sculptures. A factor in the changes which determined the character of the art form was the process of institutionalisation. Textile artists to some extent benefited from the official view that it was an area of applied arts - "just" applied arts, and so less "dangerous" than visual art, literature, film or music. This was no doubt what enabled the first Wall and Spatial Textiles Biennale to be held in Szombathely in 1970 (since 2003 the Textile Arts Triennale) and from 1975 the Industrial Textiles Biennale, which were then regularly followed by large-scale exhibitions of output in the field at home and abroad. What proves somewhat more important, however, was the Velem Art Colony. Its birth in 1975 was no accidental event. The "golden age" was over, the balance had tipped, unity dissolved, some routes proved dead ends, others held out indeterminate prospects. After the synthesis, there necessarily began a new, analytic period in textile art. Most textile artists were in any case concerned primarily with work6. Margit Szilvitzky Igazodás [Alignment], 1976 (detail) Assemblage, foam rubber, linen, wood, 130 x280 x400 cm Savaria Museum, Szombathely 161
