Részegh Botond: MUNDUS IMAGINALIS (Kiállítási katalógusok - Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 2009)

jaként emlékeztetnek bennünket az világ összetettségére Részegh Botond munkáin. Pontosan úgy, ahogyan a férfi és nő küzdelme bontakozik ki Játék a büntethetetlen fantázia bűnével lapjain. Részegh Botond lényünk ellentmondásos kettősségét szeretné megfejteni, a mítoszokba tovább élő archetípust kutatja minden véresen komoly játékában. Miért is tűnnek Részegh Botond rajzai időtlennek? Talán mert a lélek küzdelmei is azok. Szabó Noémi PLAYING WITH THE PURE LOGIC OF TANGLED LINES • Umpteen times I am reading again Botond Részegh's writing - which can be understood as his ars poetica -, with the title of one of his important graphic series: Playing with the mirror of the strained soul. I read it again and I ask the question: what can I as an art historian add to the words and drawings of an artist blessed with a poet's soul, when they are completely in harmony and form a coherent universe. Botond Részegh's confession is simple and deep, he proclaims self-confidently: "Not one moment do I lose sight of my goal to depict man in his agony, suffering and grandeur." When looking at his graphics I cannot help but remember again and again one of the very apt remarks of the art historian János Frank: "the graphic is a romantic artistic form." Romantic, yes, because it is made with the purpose to make us taking the pains to look closely at every detail and small quiver, at hidden secrets and the fine workmanship or the sensitive wildness. The graphic art is not pompous, it requires absorption. Exactly like Botond Részegh's graphics and drawings. His cool tint-drawings made with few instruments of form and his gesture-like compositions tell about heavy philosophical thoughts. The huge white surfaces as an emptiness of content and the rhythmic thickening and fading of lines, which turn up concentrated - create a fragile balance; their tension arises from the possibility of upset of the harmony between them. Botond Részegh plays his intellectual games with this just existing but very fragile balance on his graphics: he condenses life's drama in graceful lines. His recent series is a series of really erotic drawings: Playing with the sin of the unpunishable imagination. We don't see here any symbols: the wild copulation of body and soul emerges very concretely on the chaste white paper in spite of the discrete abstraction. Love is ambivalent: body and soul are involved simultaneously; it is a game in pair or alone, deadly serious and relieving light. Love may be erotic; love may be instinct, order and chaos. Love is positive, love is negative and love is everything and nothing at the same time. The drawings tell maybe about this (too). .. Részegh plays with a lightly drafted line, with the schematic shape of faceless women and men whose only and main attribute is their genitals. Therefore, they can be anybody and everybody; they are the symbols of Man. The plainness of the series of drawings, the embarrassing crudeness of love's depiction, the brutal fleshliness, the evidence of copulation admonish of frankness. Botond Részegh's love fictions are not happy, not hedonistic but they reveal the deepest form of struggle. Spiritual forerunner of the erotic drawings is the series of Playing with the mirror of the strained soul, in which two mythological creatures, the virgins-devouring half-man half-bull Minotaur, exiled into the labyrinth of Crete and the Centaur hold a fictive dialogue. As a memento of the eternal struggle, the Minotaur's spontaneity and the spiritual superiority of the Centaur remind us of the complexity of the world in the works of Botond Részegh. Exactly the same way as the struggle of man and woman unfolds on the leaves of Playing with the sin of the unpunishable imagination. Botond Részegh strives for deciphering the contradictory duality in our nature; in his every bloodily seriously game he studies the archetype that survives in the myths. Why do Botond Részegh's drawings seem timeless? Maybe, because the soul's struggles are also timeless. Noémi Szabó SPIEL MIT DER SAUBEREN LOGIK DER KRAUSEN LINIEN • Ich lese zum x-ten Mal das Schreiben von Botond Részegh, das sogar als ars poetica aufgefasst werden kann und das den Titel einer seiner wichtigen grafischen Serien trägt: Spiel mit dem Spiegel der angespannten Seele. Ich lese das Schreiben nochmals und frage: was kann man als Kunsthistoriker zu den Worten und Zeichnungen eines mit Dichterseele gesegneten Künstlers noch sagen, als sie in voller Harmonie ein einheitliches Universum darstellen. Botond Részeghs Bekenntnis ist einfach und tief, er teilt der Welt selbstsicher mit: „Ich vergesse mein Ziel nicht einen Augenblick, dass ich den Menschen in seinem Zwiespalt, Leid und seiner Erhabenheit darstellen will." Bei Betrachtung seiner Grafik muss ich unwillkürlich an die sehr treffende Behauptung des Kunsthistorikers János Frank denken: „die Grafik ist eine romantische Gattung." Ja, romantisch, weil sie dazu geschaffen ist, dass wir jedes Detail, jede winzige Regung, die verstecken Geheimnisse, die feine Ausarbeitung und die empfindliche Wildheit keine Mühen scheuend betrachten. Die Grafik ist nicht prahlerisch, sie verlangt eher eine Versunkenheit. Genau, wie es mit Botond Részeghs Grafiken und Zeichnungen der Fall ist Seine lockeren Tuscharbeiten, wo er wenig Formenmittel verwendet 3