Even for an art historian it is difficult to write about the art of László Ujvárossy in an objective manner, since the artist himself places obstacles in the way of such an endeavour. He does so by striving to underpin all his past, present, and at times even forthcoming artistic steps with rational arguments, meticulously justifying every creative manifestation through his own interpretations of current contemporary art-theoretical concepts – thereby effectively discarding any other alternative approaches. More indirectly, yet equally pointing towards the interpretation of his own art, is the concentrated attention and occasional enthusiasm with which he follows contemporary European art movements, trends, and their current manifestations. Through the analysis of these phenomena, he inevitably articulates himself in a self-reflective manner, referring back to – or projecting forward towards – his own artistic practice.
Beyond any theoretical approach, in all of László Ujvárossy’s artistic manifestations and works of art, his artistically endowed uniqueness is consistently palpable as a qualitative surplus. The aesthetic key to his works may lie precisely in the contradiction arising within their reception – a tension unfolding between their conceptual intentions, their theoretical armature, and their elementary message, or, indeed, their almost visceral effect.
What might be the source of this? It derives in part from the European trans-avant-garde zeitgeist that shaped his formative artistic years in the beginning, which remains validly present in our region even to this day, exerting a defining influence on Ujvárossy’s generation. At the same time, it also stems from the specific local intellectual tradition – from the spiritual and artistic milieu of Transylvanian Hungarian culture – and from the temporary contradictions inherent within it.
The art of László Ujvárossy unfolded at a time – from the late 1970s to the early 1980s – when, in East-Central Europe, abstraction, the tautological narration of professional issues, and the depth and novelty of the intellectual grounding of the creative process were deemed progressive within the the world of arts. It was during this period that deconstructivity, new abstraction, conceptualism, experimentalism, ephemerality, arte povera, minimalism, and the spirit of private mythologies gained territory within this region – all movements whose origins lay in the presence of a strong artistic individuality or of a group appearing with clearly defined conceptual position, together with the theoretical constructions or creative methods devised by them. It was through the combined effect of these tendencies – through their often contradictory simultaneous presence and their marginalised forms and shapes – that the art of the region’s young artists was interwoven at a moment when it was just beginning to free itself from the ideological pressure of power and the influence of its distorted taste. Among other factors, it was precisely this colourful spectrum of East-Central European neo- and trans-avant-garde art that established Oradea (Nagyvárad) as one of its most important strongholds. It was this artistic scene of the 1980s that he himself analysed in an outstanding, comprehensive study – as “crown witness”, and as one of the illustrious representatives of Oradea’s fine art milieu. He later even published this work as a well-documented book in both Hungarian and Romanian under the title Progresszív kortárs művészeti törekvések Nagyváradon a nyolcvanas években (Progressive Contemporary Artistic Endeavours in Oradea in the 1980s). In this gap-filling work, he offers an excellent characterisation of the essence of the artistic strategy that emerged there and then – a strategy into which he himself also integrated, if in certain respects out of necessity, as others did also, and of which he can in fact be regarded as one of its most distinctive formative figures. This strategy took shape within an artistic climate that presented itself as “apparently committed to socialism, yet in reality articulated through a West-oriented language embedded in metaphorical constructions (concealed messages) and self-censorship”.
Yet another interpretation of his art may also derive from the visceral determination presented, almost involuntarily, by local tradition, and perhaps even from that inner psychological disposition connected to the spiritual and emotional endowment that he was provisioned with in childhood by his family background rooted in Székelyföld. One of the most characteristic features of this endowment was the politically enforced exclusion he personally experienced and suffered from – one rooted in origin and social belonging. Last but not least, his work was also shaped by an ambivalent cultural affectivity towards the values of the past. A direct consequence of this is the sense of familiarity sought out and re-examined through the lenses of a contemporary artist in relation to inherited spiritual traditions – as well as the questioning of that very familiarity. The confrontation – and at times the collision – of the spiritual legacy inherent in given, singular cultural values with more refined ethnographic and historical criteria grounded in a more classical value system, and with the most recent contemporary aesthetic considerations in particular, endows the works of László Ujvárossy with a distinctively dual form of elementary determination, structured along existential and moral lines.
During the elaboration of the concept and throughout the creative process that brings the work into being, this multiply doubled feature manifests itself as a rich density of content and a high degree of formal complexity. It is from this interplay that the unmistakable uniqueness of Ujvárossy’s artwork ultimately derives.
The components and evolution of László Ujvárossy’s artistic approach over time
In the multi-part process work that constituted his diploma project, Az érzelmek felszabadítása egy rideg térből (The Liberation of Emotions from a Rigid Space, 1978–1980), one seems to witness a kind of heroic struggle of subjective and affective determinations – authenticated by numerous brilliant, virtuously handled technical components – against the quasi-conceptual international graphic canon that defined the visual profile of drawing and printmaking in Central and Eastern Europe during those years.
In terms of its impact on Transylvanian art – and indeed on Romanian art as a whole – a catalysing role can be attributed to his project titled Kakasszó (Cockcrow), a Chagall paraphrase exhibited in 1981 at the Médium exhibition in Sfântu Gheorghe (Sepsiszentgyörgy) as a member of the Dialógus (Dialogue) group, alongside the above-mentioned work and conceived in its spirit. This piece may be regarded as one of the earliest documents of his intentionally ephemeral artistic manifestations; through its lightness and tradition-embedded wit, it projected a value orientation and subjective force that already predestined the tone of his later, more mature works.
The character of his masterfully executed fairy-tale illustrations (Benedek Elek: Selyemrét (Silk Meadow), 1980) is without a doubt connected to the fact that, following his graduation, he took up employment as a teacher. He was appointed to a special needs school in Oradea (1980–88), where, during the drawing sessions led by him, he encountered the image-making world of children with disabilities – an experience that inspired a series of new visual experiments. Among other developments, it was here that he fell upon the set of problems and creative method he later discusses in detail in his book Gyógyító székek, Giccshelyzet a kortárs művészetben (Healing Chairs, The Situation of Kitsch in Contemporary Art), published in Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár) in 2007.
In his so-called “kitsch salvaging” projects – or, in other terms, his “experiments of memory-transformation” – drawing on his experiments conducted within the field of visual therapy and on his research into the nature of kitsch, Ujvárossy developed a kind of visual remedy aimed at healing the injuries caused by our artificial reality and pathological ways of living. As he himself formulates it, this reflects a disturbance, or even an illness of psychic balance, in the treatment of which visual mechanisms may come to one’s aid alongside psychiatry.
Within the book, under the heading “Szuvenírtörténet” (Souvenir story), among other themes he addresses so-called memory metaphors and systems of remembrance, the art of remembering and artistic remembrance, mnemonic symbols, as well as magical–religious symbols, profane signs, the souvenir – or the memory of the kitsch-man – and, furthermore, the roots of the paraphernalia of the cult of life.
By outlining the contemporary art scene’s “kitsch situation”, he cites numerous artistic tendencies and individual creators as examples of the phenomenon he defines as the “kitsch epidemic”, within which “the hamster wheel of consumer society, the dominance of mass-produced production and consumption, prevails”. As an artist-author, he explores the therapeutic potential of art as an antidote to kitsch, and in his art-historical overview he draws attention to possible therapeutic tools inherent in specific oeuvres and working methods. He analyses the strategies by which renowned contemporary artists use kitsch-memory elements.
In the final section of the book, he presents his own “kitsch-salvaging activity”. Above all, it is from this intellectual perspective that he re-evaluates his graphic series Az érzelmek felszabadítása egy rideg térből (The Liberation of Emotions from a Rigid Space), interpreting it as nothing other than self-therapy – a form of dialogue, a visual justification through which something of the self, and of the explicit memories of everyday reality, could be brought to surface.
From 1982 onwards, László Ujvárossy engaged in so-called kitsch salvaging as an active artistic practice. In his case, this amounts to a process work conceived in a conceptual manner and realised through a suitable medium, the essence of which lies in what he articulated in connection with the Babafej-baleset (Doll’s Head Accident) action: “if a banal scheme is charged with experience and thereby, with emotion, banality – the vague and inane routine – is transformed into expression, into symbol, and therefore artistic value emerges.”
In several of his works, the retouched family photograph, the souvenir object, and the artificially blissful world of keepsakes and commemorative albums play a prominent role. The red tomato-patterned wallpaper forming the background of the enlarged wedding photograph in A paradicsomban (In Paradise) or Európa az enyém (Europe Is Mine) refers not only to the consumerist taste of the masses to which pseudo-art has been degraded, but also – whether intentionally or involuntarily – ironically refers to the creative methods and kitsch-parrying “therapy” of Pop Art icons.
A particularly striking manifestation of his kitsch-purifying, “recycling” pursuits is Giccskontakt (Kitsch Contact, 1985), which later became the first instance of a new creative method and procedure repeatedly employed by the artist: a deliberate visual-art intervention into a kitsch painting purchased at a market. He took a characteristically sentimental kitsch painting, and added a monstrously oversized “diarrhoeic cricket.” to the landscape. In this instance, his intention was to dismantle the characteristic “aura of kitsch” through humour.
His wide-ranging interests also extend to exploring the possibilities of capturing and documenting the fleeting moment. In one of his most characteristic actions, he photographed, minute by minute, the shifting configurations of light created by changing illumination on a canvas previously hanged in direct sunlight. He then preserved the contours of these transient light-forms using a stitch technique that derived from traditional folk embroidery, thereby producing an entirely free – one might even say non-figurative – pattern through a traditional method and material. A fény lenyomata (Imprint of Light, 1982).
Under the burden of intensified political and historical pressure, his social sensitivity manifested itself demonstratively within his artistic attitude. In his 1983 photo action titled Utazás (Journey), he alluded to the measures of the national-communist dictatorship under Ceaușescu, which severely restricted people’s freedom of movement. In the same year, prior to a compulsory celebratory parade glorifying the regime, he created a self-caricature of himself – cutting his hair into a deliberately comic shape – in Felvonulás előtti önarckép (Self-Portrait before the Parade, photo action, 1983). The following year, in a staged and documented action, he employed his visual artist wife as a medium to devise a photo–comic-strip sequence that functions as a metaphor of freedom while also giving a hint about self-censorship. Gy. megeszi a kék felhőt (Gy. Eats the Blue Cloud, action, 1984).
A similarly politically charged critical stance permeates his cycle titled A szocialista gettóban (In the Socialist Ghetto, 1985–1989), in which he employed visual and verbal elements, giving suggestive hints about the intolerable conditions and circumstances of the system implicitly. Such works include Találkozás a Szörnnyel (Encounter with the Monster, 1984); Tömbház közösség (Housing-Block Community, 1985); A nagy kék sablon (The Great Blue Template, 1985); as well as the coloured, unique graphic works Mennyi mennyi levegőre (How Much, How Much Air, 1986) and Megéneklünk Románia (We Sing of You, Romania, 1987). These works are characterised above all by an urge to release emotional manifestations arising from a desire for individual freedom in confrontation with an endured everyday reality, and by the expression of an inward, psychological resistance dismantled into forms of particularity in opposition to restrictive conditions. His gouaches, in line with the neo-expressionist strategies introduced by the emerging generation of young artists in the 1980s, are at once carefully crafted – markedly refined in their use of colour and line values – while, in terms of their figurativity, they are simultaneously encumbered by elements of art brut, offering examples of their unleashed, furiously wrathful variants. Representative works include Zoolátria (Zoolatry, 1987); A kommunista Párt utolsó kongresszusa (The Last Congress of the Communist Party, 1988); and Sötétségbe zárva (Confined to Darkness, 1989).
After the political transition, his interest in social issues became increasingly self-reflexive, unfolding through the re-evaluation of past experiences and assuming a subjective character filtered through the lenses of private mythology. This shift is reflected in works such as Címnélküli állapot (Untitled State, installation, 1991); Gyermekkori emlék (Childhood Memory, installation, 1992); Memory familiar (installation, 1994–2004); Experiment Art Expo; and Gyógyíthatatlan. Mágia a TV által (Incurable. Magic through Television, video installation), Ex Oriente Lux (1993).
Judging from the above, it is quite clear that one of the principal determinants of his oeuvre is conceptuality, together with the experimental artistic attitude that reinforces it. A particularly emblematic manifestation of this commitment – one that also articulates an ars poetica–like allegiance through the choice of role models – is found in the creation of installations such as Joseph Beuys emlékére (In Memory of Joseph Beuys), Mobilul fotografia, 1986), conceived in homage to Joseph Beuys. Works produced in a similar spirit include Emlékgenerátor (Memory Generator, installation, 1987); A kékpapír emlékezete (The Memory of Blueprint, book imprint from a shop window, 1988); as well as the site-specific installation Virtuális találkozás Bolyai János hadmérnökkel (Virtual Encounter with Military Engineer János Bolyai, 2003), created in the spirit of the genius loci and invoking János Bolyai.
The more subjective dimension of his artistic attitude may be traced in his intense interest in fertility rites and mate-selection practices rooted in folk traditions, as well as in the exploration of sexuality-related taboos emerging from the subconscious of the psyche, and in the refined, mediated visual-artistic articulation of folk and urban humour employed to reveal them. This line of inquiry is manifested in works such as Termékenységi jelek (Fertility Signs, gouache, 1987); A termékenység – asztala (The Table of Fertility, installation, 1988); Magok (Seeds, mixed media, 1989); Termésmágia (Harvest Magic, installation, 1990); Furulyás kalandor utazásai (The Journeys of the Flute-Playing Adventurer, watercolour, 1991); and Inter – médium (Inter – Medium, video installation, 1998).
Closely connected to the theme of fertility – though at times emphatically extending beyond it, not only in subject matter but characteristically also in material usage – his artistic practice is permeated by questions concerning the sustainability of natural balance, as exemplified by A szarvas lelke (The Soul of the Stag, mixed media on paper, 1991). This concern runs parallel to an exploration of Eastern European-ness as an identity, articulated within the framework of the cultural and civilisational relationship between centre and periphery, as seen in Vízállás jelentés (Water Level Report, installation created jointly with the Dialógus group, 1993) and Keleti szél (Eastern Wind, installation, 1994).
From the mid-1990s onwards, his oeuvre has been strongly characterised by thematic and generic complexity, becoming distinctive through the appropriation of elements of visual language and through an expansive, repetitive artistic attitude underlined by recurring thematic and formal patterns. Works exemplifying this approach include A giccs reciklálása (Recycling Kitsch, action, 1994); A giccs reciklálása (Recycling Kitsch, 1997); Másolata a másolatnak (Copy of the Copy, action, 1994); Family Man (1999); and Éljen és virágozzék! Trăiască şi să înflorească! (May It Live and Flourish!, installation, 2000).
In the most recent phase of László Ujvárossy’s artistic career, particular emphasis is placed on the presentation of a refined, aesthetically nuanced visual universe shaped by a subject striving for personal expression under the spell of the magic of the digital image and despite the pressures of its quantitative proliferation. This universe is articulated through processes that are at times involuntary, at others consciously pursued, as demonstrated in works such as Határeset (Borderline, video installation, 2007); Mediátor, képek egy forgatókönyvből (Mediator: Images from a Screenplay, 2009); and Splendor ordinis (photographic print, 2011).
[2014]