Kopacz Mária: Lebegő valóság (Szentendre, 2011)

FLOATI NG R EALITY When we want to enter Mária Kopacz' painter-world, we have to leave behind our ordinary way of thinking and scale of values. It is of no avail looking for orientation in the mazes of imagination, visions, dreams, tales and myths, of individual and collective subconscious memories. We have to tune in to this world beyond time and space without perspective and horizon, having no front and back, no up and down, where everything streams, floats, whirls beyond measure in a colourful entanglement without any reason and aim. The creative imagination having set itself completely free, does recognize neither borders, nor limitations, neither in the contents, nor in the means of expression. Therefore it is not surprising when nothing is identical with that what we mean it is at the first glancé, by sheer force of habit, beeause everything gets a new meaning, a symbolie eontent and message in this visual and colourful world. Everything is compatible with everything. A permanent, eventless and purposeless motion, a free streaming dominate this happy, colourful primordial chaos. The paintings are filled with such organic, imagination-begot creatures, in which animal, vegetál and humán conditions of existence unify in an organic way. We are not surprised or shocked when seeing plánt formations branch off from a humán head, a giant fish swimming with hands and feet in the air, a winged fox or heads without body. They rather seem familiar. Maybe we know them from a consciousness, which all humans had shared once, which we still had as children and which we lost on the way to become educated adults. Mária Kopacz from Marosvásárhely in Transylvania has begun her career as graphic artist. She has met already with important recognition, participated in several domestic and international exhibitions, when she began to paint at the end of the 1980s. But her graphic past is not to be denied. The function of line and the application of drawing technique in her paintings are not a preparatory, subordinated phase. On the contrary, with using them she tops off her pictures. Her dynamic, once powerful, once fine sketching emphasizes, characterizes and sets in a frame her swimming, floating, freely streaming, zigzagging and all expectation flouting creatures. Her pictures suggest firmness and intuition simultaneously. The former concerns rather the painting-technique, the latter the contents. Mária Kopacz allows her internál world to rise freely to the surface but she shapes it to image with a firm hand. Her every piece of work suggests that she enjoys this magic act, the creation of images, she loves her creatures and sometimes even she might be surprised seeing who or what look back from the painting. In a figurative sense of course, beeause the actors of the Kopacz-paintings are void of look. Either they wear a mask or - although having eyes - they lack pupils. So, their looks don't mirror any emotion. Still, they are not indifferent creatures. A restrained smile, an expressing hand, the gestures of body language reveal a lot. The visual world of Mária Kopacz is hiding and self-revealing at the same time, never sentimental. Subtle humour, pervasive love of life and optimism emanate from her pictures. Katalin Török