Kopin Katalin (szerk.): Test objektív. A test reprezentációja a kortárs művészetben - Ferenczy Múzeum kiadványai, C. sorozat: Katalógusok 5. (Szentendre, 2013)

The installation entitled Skirt by Ottó Vincze is the opening, programme-setting artwork of the exhibition which endeavours to present the possibilities and limits of reflection on the contemporary representation of the body, while providing objective criticism. The artwork created by Ottó Vincze in 1998 represents three body schemes based on pattern design books used in the readyto-wear clothing industry of the 1950s. The enlarged body contours made of hammered tin wire express the ideal body image which changes in different periods. It is compulsory for everyone to fit into this restricted coordinate system. The installation entitled Seasonal Venus reacts to the changes of a canon prescribed by society. The work depicts a stocky and buxom woman, who is completely different from the present-day beauty ideal, as a striking body object, holding a distorting mirror up to us.

Headless puppets deprived of their individuality and depicted from their chest down became the means of compelling social pressure in Ottó Vincze’s works in the 1990s. The waist-high plaited nude coloured hangings in front of the three female figures of the installation Skirt seemingly provide a solution to the concealment of human bodies which do not fall into the ideal category, since they draw our attention to the fact that people not belonging to the mainstream of the body canon should not show themselves, but should correct reality by hiding their bodies instead.

The material of the installation, the tin wire, which is slightly further off the wall, casting delicate shadow and normally used as auxiliary material in industry, also strengthens the feeling of an impersonal, alienated body image. The double contour lines referto vulnerable body image and the gap between real and perceived body awareness.