Kókay Krisztina (Esztergom, 2005)

This time, Kókay draws only one half of the oval with an ornamental stripe of embellishments, prolific patterns and designs running down its middle, its bisecting line. This middle line, this road with its meandering labyrinths is executed in an interesting way.

This drawing's being a Roman reminiscence is not a fiction, a speculation - it's a fact. This fact is proven by the lower, hatched stripe providing closure for the original drawing, in which the panels are filled alternately with hand-drawn motifs, architectonic details, meticulous pillars, segments of triumphal arches, broken bits of gravestones and other fragments of architecture. The large vertical form - which, perhaps, is a torso (Torso) or a halved corpus (3 by 1.5m) in this context, in the enclosed space of the gallery, are each other's counterparts. The Torso, the paper work, or the Corpus - is lighter, paler, fainter compared to the tracing paper opus. (A tracing paper work, with its black ink lines and photocopied ink, is deeper black.) The large-sized vertical drawing, together with the other pictures, can be likened to a landscape, sculpture or a shape in space submerged in mist. Kókay works the white paper with almost brutal gestures - or, more gently, with black ink. The almost monotonous repetition of signs covers the surface of the paper, sensitively, with a sensual density. These touches are like gentle pats, words, steps, sound beats or other beats. Thousands of lines, thousands of gestures cover the sheets. The artist changes the force and the direction of her touches guided by her moods, sates of mind and the influences of the outside world. And so the traces of black-lead and ink also change. Kókay often improvises; she slows or quickens her movements subconsciously. Struggling, she draws every square centimeter of her self-torturing, meditative, analytical works. She uses an unknown system of symbols. She has completed her own, almost autistic, alphabet or runic script, which se uses continually and consistently. She writes with drawing. She draws with writing. Her drawings are also works of calligraphy. She steps out of her enclosed space and enters a new dimension.

Kókay steps out of her enclosed space and enters a new dimension. She has enlarged her owTn system of symbols. She has expanded their space - gave them more square meters. By so doing she gains space, occupies space for herself. She has extended her territory with her writing, symbols, ideas and dense meticulous flow of patterns. She has filled the expanding universe, the space waiting to be sated with art, the white surface, the paper that never runs out. The act of enlargement and her choice of a new material - tracing paper - come as revelations. The exhibition reflects the artistic attitude of "performance", an acknowledged exhibitionism and self-surrender at the moment when, from complete isolation, from a closed and different world, the protagonist, the artist, steps out to show herself at an exhibition.

1999