I never wanted to be an artist. I wanted to be a gardener or working in a forest.
I was born before the Second World War in the last month
in 1937 and as I was three or four
the family has seen that I have some talent.
‘Oh, that child will be an artist’.
‘The child will be a drawing teacher.’ That was the best.
This room is devoted to graphics. I began
as a graphic print maker and this is my old
machine. I never use it but I didn’t want
to sell it.
Dora studied print making
and graphics at the Academy of Fine Arts in
Budapest. He went on to develop a wide-ranging
and experimental practice which involved many
media. She’s always adhered to the idea
that interdisciplinary practice was very important
to her and allowed her to develop her ideas
across a wide range of media.
Dora and her peers were working in an environment
in which the state viewed works as either prohibited
or tolerated.
It was a grey life, I could say. There was
no view to the future. This was the time of
the Hungarian Revolution.
- Scenes on the Austro-Hungarian border measure
the scope of Hungary’s anti-red revolt.
After a revolt that began with student demonstrations
and spread across the country like wildfire -
This time, the revolution, it was a terrible
time because at first there was big enthusiasm.
We shall be free and everything was changing.
Because we had always known that we are not
free people.
But it was also a revolution of Hungarian
art and I found myself in a circle of artistic ‘happenings’.
As conceptual art came into the Eastern part
of Europe it was for me an opening. Everything
that I couldn’t use as an art object before,
and the idea that I could use it as an art
idea. It was much more open. The world was open.
An important aspect of Dora’s
influence was her teaching practices. She
worked with Miklós Erdély at the Factory
Cultural Centre in Budapest to develop very
experimental workshops which were referred
to as 'creativity exercises'.
To teach, I never wanted to do it but I was
always very interested to work with young
people.
In the meantime, I was also very interested
in film. This very simple observation through
the camera was my intention.
Also the photograph, for example, minimal
movements. You see nothing if you look there,
but the little window which is making a very
slow movement on the object. And that I photographed,
for example.
One of the things that Dora
always talks about is work in motion and she
refers to this idea of displacement or shifting
or continual change. And small changes, which
develop out of a structure but allow something
new to emerge.
I was always very close to music. Since I
make films, I also saw the possibility to
make music, not as a musician but as an outsider.
I thought these coloured lines, forms, were
also sound.
I think it’s interesting
that Dora herself has said she’s more interested
in process than necessarily the finished result.
And you can really see that across the ways she’s
pushing different media.
In the other room you see these long pieces
and there are two kinds.
I gave a name to it: ‘form gymnastics’.
It appears as if the forms are dancing across
the wall, so in the same way that in her very
early printmaking
she used movement and displacement
and rhythm, you see her continuing these ideas
in her most recent painting series.
Everybody knows that red compliments green
but there are many reds and many greens.
I made these layers that cross each other on
the surface. You see how they are changing
before your eyes.
I think what you see across her practice,
whichever medium she chooses to work with,
she is always referring to the same ideas
and the same processes. So I think she’s
pursued her line of inquiry, but she’s also
involved and encouraged peers and younger
generations of artists on her journey.
And I think in that way she’s very inclusive
and has had a really big impact within Hungary
and beyond.
From order, it is possible to jump out. From
chaos it is not possible to jump out because
it has no direction. Play has an order.
