Benedek Csaba – H. Bathó Edit – Gulyás Katalin – Horváth László – Kaposvári Gyöngyi szerk.: Tisicum - A Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Megyei Múzeumok Évkönyve 14. (2004)

"Non-Objective Painting", Árpád Cselényi's "Ács" Exhibition

MÁRIA EGRI NON-OBJECTIVE PAINTING", ÁRPÁD CSELÉNYI'S "ÁCS" EXHIBITION Árpád Cselényi was born in 1971 in Slovakia near Miskolc, on the other side of the border in the village of Tornaija. He went to technical secondary school and studied mechanical engineering, after that he worked as an engine fitter for a while. After several attempts of various kinds, he entered the university of Nyitra, where he studied Hungarian linguistics and literature and Arts. He graduated in 1997. He took his PhD in 2003; his thesis was about the works of Győző Határ. He first appeared in the public in the productions of Vertigo Art Studio, which he formed with his university friends, they experimented with the most up-to-date tendencies of modern art: performances and installations. They appeared at the Érsekújvár Art Festival as well, which, in recent years, has been held in Budapest, too. At the same place, he has taken part in several group exhibitions. At the beginning of 2004, the Museum of Karcag organised his first individual exhibition. Some pictures of this exhibition were displayed at the Museum of Szolnok at the end of 2004. Árpád Cselényi reached his Christ-age not long ago. This is where the title of the Damjanich Museum exhibition comes from: 33 windows. "33 windows looking at my life" the artist explains. However, as we get to know the pictures, we must admit these windows are not so easy to look through. Since the Renaissance, in fine art Nature has been the "normative standard"; how can the barely 100-year old abstract art compete in understanding and reception, or, to be more precise, the so-called non-figurative painting which lacks the traditional natural forms of view. And, although it is also based on nature, the artist expresses his impressions gained from nature by using colours, lines and forms and so he creates a new visual reality. Even in the woks of the most visionary artists, the figurative forms still preserve some anthropomorphic characteristics. However, if a picture lacks a subject, we have no conceptual ground to comprehend it. We need to try to perceive and recognize the picture that consists of merely forms and colours on its own. Non-figuratism is aimed at visual pleasure, perceptional impressions and formal and emotional associations. Emotions and thoughts take their turns; they attach together and exist together. This applies for both the creation and the reception of the piece of art. Árpád Cselényi tries to express his thoughts mainly in sequences of pictures. His oil painting find their final place on the canvass after a series of drawings, tempera, water-colour sketches, and even so, it is only occasionally that he feels his intentions fulfilled. "A thought always has a lot of meanings. You can't possibly shape a thing in one single sentence. Everything has a more complex and comprehensive sense" he believes. In his displayed material, we can find four sequences. "A dozen sacks" is the title of his 12 pieces painted on sackcloth and glued on thin board. The sack is a closed form; we can't see what's inside. Basically, it could be anything. But the half-full bundle strangled at the middle holds a lot of associations from jolly Santa Claus basket to introverted embryo shape. This sack form has developed after a lot of drawing attempts, and become the basic form which, tied here and there, bursting out at other places, is capable of expressing the impressions living and moving inside. The sacks may be closed, but the brightly coloured pictures reassure the hope that something jolly will emerge from them. The lines are bordered and broken at the same time - their closedness is not real closedness. The majority of them have bright, frisky colours with a lot of sketchy elements. In one of the sacks, a little airy red thing suggests that it would be worth opening it. The exciting touch of the rough canvass, which the artist cuts up and gashes at places, reinforces this. He appears to concretize and objectivate with it. In most of Cselényi's works there is a network of lines. They are basically to fill the surface, they disrupt, hide or ornament the painted forms, and they break away from the circumscription lines that emphasize the forms. Their variations are countless; vertical lines cutting horizontal ones in networks of squares, flared pattern of diagonal lines, a bunch of parallel lines without cutting one another etc. The artist has various intentions with the strength and density of the bowing painted or scratched lines. As these grids are of various kinds, they serve various different functions in different pictures. In all 12 pieces, Cselényi glued the sackcloth on either side of wallboard. The sackcloth is dissected to various extend and he glues them on the wallboard either in one piece or in a number of smaller ones using the surface of the wallboard between them. On the whole, each picture is characterised by the unity of the used material, the apparent presence of the torn sackcloth and wallboard, the continuation of the coloured forms of the sacks on the board, and by form, they all share the shape of a sack. The salved and flowed patches on top of the other alter with smaller splashed blots. The surface of these is scraped at places. In some of his compositions, he has rasped, scratched and abraded the surface, which then evokes archaic associations. Next to the dense body-colour layers, sometimes he has made strokes with thick brushes so the paint has sideslipped giving way to the free sensational predominance of the roughly primed white beads of 517