Saly Noémi (szerk.): Gorka Lívia keramikusművész (Budapest, 2010)
Kollin András: Bibliográfia
her newest works also deal with the issues of individual freedom. Her works explore and mirror the eternal questions of the world: freedom and determination, the existence or denial of predestined fate, cognition itself and its possible level, and the freedom of human fulfilment (Kapu, "Gate", chamot clay, 1974; Kagyló, "Shell", chamot clay, 1974; Sejt, "Cell", rock-clay, 1977; Föld, "Earth", rock-clay, 1975; Nap, "Sun", rock-clay 1977; Kezdet, "Beginning", rock-clay fired with copper, 1977 [Cat.; 129]; Hasadás, "Fissure", chamot clay 1975 [Cat.: 110]; Harmónia I-Ш., "Harmony 1-Ш", rock-clay, 1977 [Cat.: 120-1221; Hasítások, "Fissures", rock-clay, 1977; Testvérformák, "Sibling Forms", chamot clay, 1977 [Cat.: 114|; Szárny, "Wing", rock-clay, 1977; Madár, "Bird", rock-clay, 1977; Szárnyaló madarak, "Soaring Birds", rockclay, 1976, Hungarian Embassy, Washington).44 The works she refers to as wall paintings are distinctive, individual sculpture-reliefs. The style of expression is closest to that of expressionist painting: they express abstract thought and phenomena. Her works entitled Sejt ("Cell", high-temperature rock clay), the two-piece Barna falikép ("Brown Wall Painting", chamot clay [Cat.: 127[), her Világos falikép ("Light Wall Painting", hightemperature rock-clay [Cat.: 128]), and Fent és lent ("Up and Down", high-temperature rock-clay [Cat.: 125-126]), contain within themselves the artist's experiments with materials and expression. They bring to our minds the big bang, atomic fission, and the creation of the universe. On examining the surfaces of her exciting wall paintings, we may discover many phases of the impulsive artistic creation process. The works have no frame, nor do they have a "beginning and an end”, it is as if we are looking at just part of an endless process (or on the contrary, a unit of the whole viewed from infinity). On other wall paintings, she "repeats" the tiny, magnified details of wood bark, as if revealing the immenseness of the universe though the hidden secrets of nature (Hajlított falikép, "Curved Wall Painting", high-temperature rock-clay, ca.1985 [Cat.: 144-146]. Apart from the universality of the world and problems of existence theory, one of her ever-recurring themes is freedom. Her 1987 exhibition at the Vigadó Gallery was enthused with the all-overwhelming feeling of and need for artistic and human freedom. Her sculptures of soaring birds - and at an even more abstract level those depicting wings - portrayed the [oy of existence, an anthem of human freedom. The blue-green, brown and white birds and their wings flew out of the huge windows of the Vigadó Gallery as the coronation of her whole life’s work [Cat.: 149-152, 155[.45 The lines of the waves and those of the wings melted into one - spiralling to great heights, soaring and plummeting down towards the earth. "I managed to say what 1 wanted to" - the artist said about her works and the exhibition.46 The philosophy that Lívia Gorka has "imaged" in her clay spans from the dawn and creation of the Earth to the appearance of the first primeval cell. In her works dealing with the macro- and microcosm she endeavours to depict the moments of creation, life and change with the same philosophical thoroughness as do thinkers, poets, writers and painters. In the Corvina Kiadó publisher's Műterem ("Studio") series, the volume Lívia Gorka includes the passage entitled Vallomás ("A Confession"). Having read it, we not only become intimately familiar with the meaning and expressive strength of her work, but also in the most authoritative way with the manner of thinking and feeling that has guided her throughout her life. On reading her writing we begin to understand that she is not only an artist of material: her facility for expression as an author, her way of thinking also represents a literary and philosophical treasure. The central motif of the poems of Amy Károlyi, the wife of highly acclaimed poet Sándor Weöres, was passing away. The poetry of "still is" and “is no more". The issue of the transition between living and no longer living and of change itself. The capturing of the moment of "still exists" and "no longer exists". Lívia Gorka is fascinated by exactly the opposite: the moment and process of creation, existence, birth and re-birth, coming into being. The question of "How do things come to be, to be created?" In which we are present no more and no less than any other component or cell. "If is a difficult, human deed: to create unity between intellectual and physical work. Pottery is a craft of limitless opportunities, where material gives rise to thought and the newly born idea searches inquisitively for the most suitable material with which 43 i i
