Ván Hajnalka (szerk.): Bepillantás a kintbe. Kolozsváry-Stupler Éva művészete - Munkácsy Mihály Múzeum Közleményei 9. (Békéscsaba, 2017)
Ván Hajnalka: Bepillatnás a kintbe
30 Arbeit Macht Frei 2000 Mixed Media 37” x 14” x 8” rest of the world still allows for a limited degree of freedom. Bound is an example of this combination, showing the power of abstraction to convey meaning without any obviously narrative content. Eva does make use of narrative, sometimes in subtle ways. In, for example, Arbeit macht frei, the little figures are trying to claw their way out of the burning ovens, collapsing two separate times and spaces - the gassing and the cremating - into a single image of horror. An important theme that runs through Eva’s ■■■■■■■■■■■■ work is that of home, and it’s concomitant, homelessness. When we leave for Hungary, Eva says that she is going home; when we leave Budapest to return to Los Angeles, Eva says that she is going home. This seeming contradiction is expressed in her art by the frequent employment of plant roots. For such roots to be used in the artwork, they must, of course, quite literally be uprooted. As such they become a strong symbol of human uprootedness. But, unlike plants, humans are more resilient to change. She and her late husband Paul Kolosvary, also an artist, had to put down new roots several times after leaving Hungary in 1956. My Many Roots is the product of this experience. The not-quite-neat way that they are contained in related shallow boxes suggests the couple’s struggle and achievement in bringing order out of chaos. This joy of achievement may also be seen contextually in Eva’s more humorous pieces, although even these are not without a degree of Galgenhumor. Her wry sense of humor is especially apparent in such a work as Eva’s Poultry Recipes, where the image of the baby - who looks far too young to be able to read - is counteracted by the title of both the piece and the book that the baby holds. Lay people, after Eva has given a talk, will frequently ask which comes first, the concept or the material. She invariably replies that both can happen. It is not the sort of question that many artists would ask. The so-called creative process is often a dialectical relationship between idea and development, whether sparked first by a concept or an attraction to the material. Another frequent question is about the objects’ original function, before being incorporated into the artwork and given a “new meaning.” Such a new meaning should not obscure our
