Csilla Kelecsényi is a member of the great generation of textile artists that emerged in the 1970s. She is an autonomous fine artist and a multimedia practitioner. A versatile and prolific creator, the materials underpinning her work are as diverse as the genres in which she operates. Exploring the borderlands between industrial design and fine art, she moves with ease from the traditional French Gobelin technique to electrography. Her approach is fundamentally rooted in a fine-art sensibility. She has produced works in textile, paper, book art, and painting. In 1983, she was awarded the Smohay Foundation Prize for Fine Art, and in 1997, she received the Ferenczy Noémi Prize. Since 2012, she has been a corresponding member, and since 2013 a full member, of the Hungarian Academy of Arts.
In her work, conceptual concerns, analysis, deconstruction, and reinterpretation constitute the principal orientation. Throughout, she seeks the human being, existence itself, its structure and functioning, its traces, analogues, and projections. Through a broad repertoire of artistic modes of expression, her works engage in reflection on history and on the problems of the present age. Series play a significant role within her oeuvre. These are bodies of interrelated works focused on a given theme that may best be likened to a short-story collection, in which the individual pieces stand on their own, yet together offer the most complete articulation, mutually inflecting and refining one another’s meanings.
From an early age, Csilla Kelecsényi’s life was shaped by a deep attachment to art. Although she initially prepared for a musical career, she continued her studies in the decorative painting programme of the Vocational Secondary School for Visual Arts (now: Secondary School of Visual Arts). The technical knowledge acquired there, together with the skills required for painting and the internalisation of a fine-art approach, proved decisive for her entire artistic career. After completing secondary school, she pursued further studies at the College of Applied Arts (now: Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design) in the tapestry and carpet design programme, graduating in 1976. However, shortly after completing her studies, a weaving accident forced her to abandon the physically demanding practice of producing large-scale tapestries, compelling a change of direction. Leaving traditional textile behind, she turned towards experimental textile practice.
The early phase of her career is closely linked to the activities of the Velem Textile Artists’ Workshop, whose aim was to renew textile art by providing experimental and research opportunities for textile artists seeking new paths beyond established traditions. As a newly graduated artist, she participated in the work of the Velem workshop in 1977, 1978, 1979, and 1981, through a consciously planned programme of grant applications that built upon one another year by year. At the centre of her investigations were organic fibre experiments; the interplay of loose and tensioned threads; the layering, transparency, and mutual interaction of thread systems; and the splitting of tensioned threads. Her observations were guided by a dual perspective: that of the experimenting outsider and that of the artist seeking to grasp the moment. In her fibre experiments conducted with a quasi-scientific rigour, she studied threads guided within frames in varying thicknesses, colours, layers, and modes of interconnection; she documented these configurations and subsequently dismantled them. Her primary aim was not the creation of a lasting artwork, but the acquisition of experience during the process of making and the understanding of the behaviour of threads. At the same time, she sought to experience, and, in a somewhat paradoxical manner, to preserve, the tension generated during the stretching of the threads and the moment of its release, of cutting through. The ‘wounds’ created by these cuts were preserved with wax and pitch. Much like the lens of a microscope, the frames used in her work to stretch the threads functioned to isolate and bring into closer focus a fragment of the world. Alongside miniatures and spatial textiles, this period is represented by objects, installations, and performances.
The Víz- és vérerek (Water Veins and Blood Vessels) spatial textile series brought together loosely guided threads suspended between perforated Plexiglas panels, while the Lágy téglák (Soft Bricks) mini-textile series synthesised her experiments with tensioned and cut threads. Her first major success, drawing on the results of the Velem experiments, was her spatial textile Áramlások (Flows), which was awarded First Prize at the 5th Wall and Spatial Textile Biennial in 1978. As a form of recognition associated with the award, she was granted the opportunity for a solo presentation in Kőszeg in 1980. Replacing the earlier small scale with the vast interior space of the Öregtorony (Old Tower) as a ‘frame’, she stretched a tangled system of black threads between floor and ceiling, then cut through the structure and rigidified it. The mysterious light filtering through from behind the work drew visitors, regardless of their will, into the emotional field of the piece. This construction, transformed from a mini-textile into an environment, exemplifies the dramatic quality inherent in a shift of scale. Péter Fitz regarded it as the most outstanding work of the period, describing it as a textile installation.
The objects of this period lead into the domain of body art. Her textile sculptures made from plaster casts of female and male bodies, such as those in the Involvment series, for example Fekete-fehér (Black and White), Corpus, and Love, depict helpless human bodies sinking into tensioned threads, outlines barely emerging from the plane of the ground, and human bodies merging into one another, drenched in paint. The body, as a projection of the soul, reveals the condition of the soul, and the wounds created by the cutting of threads also make this perceptible. The dramatic intensity of the works is further amplified by the contrast between monochrome black and white bodies. In the early years of the decade that culminated in the regime change, politics began to intervene in Csilla Kelecsényi’s art. Her black reclining spatial sculpture Involvment, created for the 1981 Łódź Triennial, was barred from leaving Hungary by the communist party leadership on the grounds of the political situation. However, a year later she represented Hungary with two textile sculptures at the highly significant soft art exhibition K-18, Stoffwechsel (lit. Material Metabolism) in Kassel. At the opening event associated with the exhibition, she presented the performance Fekete Pietà (Black Pietà). In the late 1980s, responding to political developments in Romania, first in Graz and later in Brussels, she drew attention through her performances entitled Transsylvania to the so-called ‘rural systematisation program’ (also known as ‘Romanian village destruction’) carried out under Romanian head of state Nicolae Ceauşescu, which primarily affected the Hungarian minority.
After the highly successful exhibition in Kőszeg in 1980, her focus shifted from textile to paper, forming a transitional field between textile art and painting. Her first works in this direction were the Angol füzet (English Notebook) series, in which she incorporated pages from her English dictionary, language textbook, and diaries into a handmade paper ground, sometimes cut precisely into strips, at other times torn into fragments. Individual words or sentence fragments remain legible in places, but their original meanings have dissolved, becoming elements of a new structure. Some pieces of paper are arranged in systems reminiscent of rag weaving, while others evoke adhesive plasters or small, waterlogged boats compressed together, set against a dynamic, multilayered ground of varied materials. Towards the end of the decade, she combined the natural base tones of her handmade-paper images with materials drawn from nature, grain stalks and blades of grass. Her Természetképek (Nature Images) series suggests an archival approach akin to that embodied by the Plexiglas frames of the mini-textiles, as if she were preserving small fragments of nature, for example in works such as Olvadás (Thaw), Téli táj (Winter Landscape), and Ezüst tó (Silver Lake).
In the early 1990s, during a study visit to London, her attention turned towards built structures. In her relief painting series Londoni járdák (London Pavements), she recorded the distinctive signs of London’s streets by applying the analogy of the “pavement as the skin of the earth”. Old inscribed gas and sewer manhole covers, cracks, creases, and human and animal hand- and footprints became central elements of her works. Using an individual method that combined casting and screen-printing techniques, akin to the dabbing method employed by archaeologists, she took impressions of pavement markings, then fused the smaller paper imprints into larger, layered greyish surfaces coloured with oil and pastel. Within this cool, restrained palette, occasional glimmers of red, gold, and silver appear. She also drew on the possibilities offered by this new technique during a study trip to Rome, where the Mediterranean atmosphere of Rome and the eroding remnants of ancient history, antique tombstones, sculptures, Roman stone inscriptions, Christian symbols, and ornamental motifs, captured her attention. She composed the impressions taken from these objects, inscriptions, and symbols into distinctive units and singular forms. The previously cool colour palette gave way to the vibrant tones of brick-red and ochre. Occasionally, the inscriptions and symbols rising from the plane of the paper are complemented by delicate painted ornamental bands, and animal or vegetal motifs. Upon returning from her study trip, she applied a similar approach to the Roman-period artefacts, stelae, and tombstones preserved in the museum in Székesfehérvár. Especially noteworthy in a Hungarian context is her series Vakolatok (Plasters), which documents finely crafted stamped bricks found in Hungary.
In her work, painterly qualities find their most pronounced expression in the Homlokzatok (Facades) montage paintings produced under the influence of her study trips to Rome and Frankfurt. Through the layering of architectural elements, she brings past and present into relation within the subjective realm of emotion and memory. Meticulously elaborated details are interwoven with vibrant brushwork and a bold use of handmade paper.
In 2007, her new series Szegénység és rózsák (Poverty and Roses) was inspired by a competition marking the Saint Elizabeth Memorial Year. Created using assemblage techniques, the series draws attention to one of the most pressing issues of our time: poverty. The works are unified by a white handmade paper ground and by the roses of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, the roses of grace. Some pieces are idyllic in tone, while others adopt a markedly dramatic register. Scattered green grass and small, brightly coloured rose heads set against the white ground stand in stark contrast to the fragments of discarded urban refuse, such as cigarette butts, black plastic bags, torn envelopes, scraps of newspaper, dried leaves, pieces of tablecloth, that cover the surface, allowing the white, hope-bearing base colour to emerge only in small patches, alongside roses with blurred petals. In some works, she represents herself, for example, in portraits torn into smaller fragments that express fear, pain, and anxiety. Yet the first work of the series, the triptych Szent Erzsébet tiszteletére (In Honour of Saint Elizabeth), is optimistic in its conceptual outlook: through a pictorial sequence that becomes progressively clearer, it reaffirms faith in purification, grace, compassion, and the act of offering help.
Her most recent series, Magunkkal hurcolt emlékképeink (Memories We Carry With Us), launched in 2012, offers an intimate glimpse into the deepest layers of her inner world. Its dominant colour is blue, the bearer of reconciliation, inner calm, and hope. Working within the framework of collage, she returns to textile as her chosen material. Her textile collages speak of familial love, the processing of the past, lived moments both joyful and painful, and of mourning. Old family photographs printed on textile; fragments of family correspondence rewritten, and relived, by sewing machine; pieces of crocheted lace tablecloths recalling the warmth of home, discoloured by blue-dyeing; and tangled seams of red thread running across everything, recalling the roses of the Szegénység (Poverty) series, all function as mantras of remembrance and coming to terms with the past. This sea of memory is veiled by a thin gauze, as if the artist were asking the viewer to keep a step’s distance, in a gesture of modesty. The first piece of the series, her stitched sketch Nagyapám emlékére (In Memory of My Grandfather), takes the form of a cross, while the flag-shaped work evoking her sibling conveys the weight of memory.
Since the 2010s, she has been engaged in producing electrographic works. Her work with computers was not without precedent: between 1986 and 1988, together with Csilla Kis-Kéry and programmers from the Institute for Computer Science (Számítástechnikai Kutató Intézet, SZKI), she developed the first Hungarian textile-design software, Promint. Created specifically for the design of woven textiles, this design software was a pioneering initiative; nevertheless, rapidly advancing computer technology soon overtook this early venture. In this context, computer-based design was by no means unfamiliar to her. In 2006, the digitisation of her works offered further possibilities. Using the tools of the new medium, she ‘corrected’, reinterpreted, and further developed earlier works; thus, older creations, such as film stills from her performances, self-portraits, body imprints, and pieces from the Poverty and Roses series, became the foundations of her electrographic works. Alongside these earlier sources, new themes were also introduced, including street scenes, genre scenes from the early twentieth century, music, and sport. In her electronic works, tradition and innovation are interwoven. In addition to traditional procedures, such as collage, layering, and cutting, she employs emphasis, distortion, recolouring, and repetition.
Although it receded markedly into the background of her practice, she never turned away entirely from the techniques of traditional weaving. At the beginning of her career, she designed tapestries and carpets for the Hungarian Fashion Institute and the Home Textiles Company (Lakástextil Vállalat). From the early 2000s onwards, as a member of the Hungarian Tapestry Artists’ Association, she took part in the weaving of large-scale collective tapestries, such as Duna-Limes (Danube-Limes) and the Sándor Petőfi and Miklós Radnóti memorial tapestries.
Across her oeuvre, the evolution of colour usage is particularly revealing. When weaving her diploma work, the tapestry entitled Üveghegy (Glass Mountain), she revelled in colour, fully exploiting the possibilities offered by the technique. However, after her weaving accident, the palette of her fibre experiments was abruptly reduced: she worked primarily with blue and green, before black and white came to dominate her objects, performances, and installations. The gravity of her themes and the critical stance towards her own time are thus reinforced, underlined, by a resolute use of colour, applied either on its own or in stark opposition, but never mixed. With her gradual distancing from textile and the accompanying shift in materials, her works slowly became more colourful again. In the English Notebook series, grey already appears, and even small patches of colour emerge, while in the Nature Images series the raw ground allows the subdued brownish and greenish tones of nature to breathe. The pavement imprints reflecting England’s cooler, northern tonality are sombre and grey-toned, whereas warmer colour effects gradually return as she travels southwards. In her Frankfurt cityscapes, red and green tones enliven the image, while the Roman sculptures introduce a new chromatic register: filled with life, their vibrant palette evokes the vitality of Mediterranean landscapes. In Poverty and Roses, white and pink shining out from greyish hues assume a positive, leading role, whereas in her most recent works, Memories We Carry With Us, the defining colour is a hope-bearing blue. Her use of colour and its transformations offer insight into the artist’s worldview and the process of her artistic self-exploration.
[2016]