Csontó Lajos - Verba Andrea szerk.: Csontó Lajos: Munkák (PMMI kiadványai - Kiállítási katalógusok 16. Pest Megyei Múzeumok Igazgatósága, Szentendre, 2005)
2005
... What happened in Szentendre was that from the noise of the middle room I was transported into another time and place through a film cut that materialized in the form of a curtain. The same feeling grabbed me in the tiny space of the Mg Gallery, the bustle of Váci street suddenly threw me into a hospital tunnel covered with green tiles [this was the gateway of the building!, and then cut; in the small room that serves as the exhibition space there is the work; a foaming, rippling mass of water bubbles endlessly on the vertical screen, the tiny drowning balls go under and resurface, do under and resurface. The index circle follows and guards their movement. It's a monotonous repetition, you don't even notice that you slowly turn with the ball, too; it's dervish dance amongst the waves, a prayer milt in the wind, ordinary disappointments, but there's always hope. On the ground there's a neon sign: Forging Man. The neon sign is part of the former view of the urban street, what it indicates is related to a trade, an activity, a service. Forge-work is not an urban trade. Forging man is a poetic image, it follows the analogy of forging arms, it extends the wisdom of you forge your own destiny. The swapping of words; a substitution. Play with language. Csontó tikes to underline and fabricate words and expressions. He has forged a peculiar lettrism for himself, image and text together always create a puzzling situation. In the expression forging man the word man needs no explanation; it refers to us. The word forging already prompts us to wander. It is a trade about to disappear; it practically survives only in similes and expressions. Smith, blacksmith, farrier, it's by forging that one becomes a blacksmith, and so on. Trades disappear; the wisdom lives on but is questioned. Do I realty forge of my own destiny? In Roman mythology blacksmiths had their own god, a disabled who had been thrown off the Olympus but managed to climb back. Even though he was handicapped, he shaped his own destiny. Vulcanus, the god of fire, the blacksmith of the gods, who taught people trades and arts. Behold, in the fabric of meanings even art appears. Of course, in Rome the poor artist is burdened by the weight of millennia, and it cannot be an accident that this sight was revealed before his eye and his lens in the whirling water of the Tevére. Katalin Nagy T.
