Gerhes Gábor (Bartók 32 Galéria, 1994)

Looking at Gábor Gerhes’s exhibition of nine small scale paper .works the question inevitably arises: what is the relationship between art and play? Gerhes plays with almost everything: with materials proportions, forms, letters, objects forming words; he plays with the cosmic, the natural - if there is such thing - and the artificial world. And of course he plays even with us, the spectators. These works - due to their size and material - look like toys anyway in the blown up ’’playground” of the Gallery. At the same time they remind us of maquettes. Gerhes uses the material and working methods of maquette­­making, whereby the world(?) gets seemingly simplified, becomes measurable, homogenous and tiny. Of course maquettes themselves can also be toys. Many childrens’ toys are actually maquettes of objects from the grown-ups’ world, and making maquettes is a kind of playing. However, maquettes have a playful character for grown-ups as well (inasmuch as they are not real, not serious - they are enjoyable). The Gerhes-type ’’old-fashioned” technique of making maquettes besides demanding precision, simplifies the world of objects. Certain details, curves, irregularities disappear and are reduced to geometrical forms. It suggests that everything may be expressed with numbers, everything is measurable, thus we can bring everything under our power. However, Gerhes’s maqutte-toy world is not so simple! First of all because it is not so obvious — if they are maquettes - what are they the models of? That is to say it seems quite probable they are not plans (at least not in the strict sense of the word) and not even small scale copies of real objects. Though certain elements are predominantly ’’real” objects, like a couch, a chest of drawers, or a writing desk, the combinations and proportions are surreal (an anchor with a chest of drawers, the planet Saturn with a couch). Besides, the objects combined like this appear authentic because of their ’’true to nature” character. In this cosmos created by Gerhes nothing is natural; the objects are full of inherent cultural references, sometimes far too obvious symbols, visual signs. However, something always calls for a laugh, then again things turn serious and we are possessed by irony. These objects become animated by their titles (at first sight a bit perplexing); the titles appear on dymostrips (each word a different colour) beneath the angular, frontally arranged, mainly monochrome cardboard sculptures. The titles put the objects in quotation marks, we wander aroud amongst the possible meanings and soon realize this puzzling is part of the game. ’’Intention to Decorate” (Díszítő szándék) reminds us how ridiculous we may become if disreading reality we try to decorate: merely apply and not shape, not create. In vain we try hard while our own framework and limits define us, except if we, becoming more and more aware of them, try to broaden them. This is about all we can do, therefore we must do it. The decorating intention in itself is merely an oversized flower shape. In the piece title ’’Potted Modernity/The Unnatural Struggle of Nature” (Cserepes modemség/a természet természetellenes küzdelme) there is no trace of nature, as in ’’Vera and Landscape” (Vera és táj), namely there is only traces of it. The 4 letters of the name Vera is written into the landscape which consists only of a funny little cloud and a pine tree. The name made cold by the rational geometric forms is wedged in between them like a small scale copy of some giant advertisment. Is the triptich ’’Liebe, Glaube, Hoffnung” an addition of letters or a subtraction of living people? At first sight it suggests a play with the letters, assembled as female names (Irén, Edit, Adél). The letters gain body from the three dimensional construction and become warmer, softer, more velvety and colourful from coloured velour paper covering them. Then we might consider the woman in extreme abstraction as a starting point: it is merely a name here; word with a body, only letters cut out of colourful paper. These words have an inbetween existence, the title could give us some orientation but even the ordes of colours of the words in the title do not correspond with that of the words in the work. ’’Self-important Care” (Önhitt műgond) is also a play with the letters, though this work has a certain self-irony: ”EN” (me) lying on a tiny writing desk stares at us like an anthropomorphic machine. The ’’Black Drawer, Days of Youth Slipping by” (Fekete fiók, elillant ifjúság) may remind us of Péter Esterházy’s sentence. ’’The name of hope is time, time wearing on”. The closed black drawers are guarded by the anchor of hope, as it lies heavy on them. One is open however, the ’’spirit” (the closed, unknown past) has slipped by. What does a wooden ball with a ring around it do under a couch? More precisely the couch seems to be balanced asymmetrically on the ball, which - as it turns out from the title: ’’Last Judgement, Saturn Under the Couch” (Utolsó ítélet, Szaturnusz a kanapé alatt)— is the planet of Saturn itself. Is this then a couch for Our Lord to have a short rest before or after the (Jupiter-like) Judgement? Or perhaps the throne became a couch and Satum is swept under the carpet, that is the couch? Can we find an answer for this unusual combination if we take cultural history seriously? Satum is the planet (the frontier) ’’beyond which is either nothing or God” writes László Földényi (see Last Judgement). ’’The ball is the symbol of death and fortune: they stand (sleep) - hence the couch - on a ball, and it depends on chance to determine when and what direction it moves with them. The ball has an uncontrollable power, rolling here and there, ridiculing expectations, and while it has the most perfect, closed and undissectable body its movement represents that final uncertainity and homelessness which was the share of the children of Satum, the melancholics.” Simultaneously with this exhibition Gerhes created an installation in the Műterem Gallery called ’’The Satellite of Love”. This counterpoints in almost every respect the exhibition in the Bartók 32 Gallery, especially the piece ’’...Satum...” (The space is small there, the objects are real, they fill the whole room). Up above the planet Venus (a sphere of mirrors) is rotating, lending the space a slight disco like atmosphere. It is dark, like in the night of love, the lights reflected on the ceiling change periodically like a starry sky. Beneath is the worn couch. The ball is on the top and the couch is at the bottom. This is not the miniaturized world of the hard, cold and sluggish Saturn, but that of the real (life size), warm, unifying Venus. The hard (but maybe just) judgement is in exile here, the previous order is turned upside­­down, so that soft, penetrating, undribled love could take its place. Again we find ourselves on the verge of the serious and frivolous. All this need not be taken so seriously, or rather it has to be taken seriously, just like playing, which is intangible, standing outside the categories of serious and frivolous, good and bad, wisdom and stupidity; compared with everyday life it is free from risk, in it ’’only” the spirit is weighed. Erzsébet Tatai A katalógus létrejöttét a XI. kerületi Kulturális Alap, a Fővárosi Képzőművészeti Alap és a Nemzeti Kulturális Alap támogatta. Bartók 32 Galéria 1994. április 21-től május 12-ig Bartók 32 Galéria H-ll 11 Budapest, Bartók Béla út 32. tel./fax: (36-1) 1869-038 Nyitva: hétfő kivételével naponta 14 és 18 óra között Gerhes Gábor Utolsó ítélet, Szaturnusz a kanapé alatt fotók: Sulyok Miklós

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