Kókay Krisztina (Esztergom, 2005)

BALAZS FELEDY

Drawing and textile

We know several artists in contemporary Hungarian textile art who merge graphic art and textile art in their work, and Krisztina Kókay is one of the most prominent ones with her almost monomaniacal oeuvre that shows a nearly perfect balance of gobelins and exceptional drawings. She is the textile artist who does not build her philosophical world of fabrics based upon a special system of signs on her work as a graphic artist, but for whom drawing means the totality of artistic self-realization and who creates her woven gobelins parallel with that work. We have known her artistic path for a long time, but now we can admire her achievement again at her latest show in Gödöllő. Judit Jóry arranged the works in the two intimate halls in a way that the drawings and the gobelins show up well alongside each other. We can experience the reality behind Judit Jóry's words in one of her earlier writings: "Krisztina Kókay draws with uncompelled discipline, of her own free will. She fills large-sized white pages of drawing-paper with tiny gestures and repeated touches." What we see here are the smaller sized drawings, still, it is amazing to see the same refinement and incredible patience that led the hands of the medieval scribes building up these works. For it is an act of building; those really small and predominantly thin and hard lines of pencil or Indian ink serving as bricks, making up the structure of a building, result in a work of monumentality even if it fills only a few square centimeters on the paper. Kókay's attitude to drawing reminds me of Péter Molnár's or György Olajos's enduringly fascinating method, but its style remains sovereign, personal and rich in poesy. As one of her titles promises, she really can depict smells. And this sensitive world of her drawings is transposed into her gobelins, which represent abstraction and organic thinking at the same time. Krisztina Kókay's exhibition is an event - of graphic art and of textile art.

HUNGARIAN DEMOKRATA, 6. NOVEMBER 2003, PP.63