22th april - 21th may 2010
Vernissage 22 april 7 p.m.
B55 GALLERY, BUDAPEST
1055 Budapest, Balaton u. 4.
Opening speech by
Máthé Andrea - Aesthete
Catalogue curated by
Győrffy László - Painter and art writer
LÁSZLÓ GYŐRFFY
A Dialogue about the Inexpressible
It would be quite easy to incorporate the joint exhibition of István Nádler and Sara Berti in a binary construction based on the different phases that the two artists are at within their artistic careers, but that would not aid the understanding of the relationship between their works, as the force connecting them is not derived from local differences but universal identities. Just as the two planes of one of Sara Berti’s sculptures (Parallel), the parallel universes of the two artists also meet at a single point. In contradiction of the laws of perspective, that single point is not in the distance but here and now, in the exhibition space of the gallery. István Nádler’s tempera and oil pastel graphic pieces and Sara Berti’s small bronze sculptures are defined not by the theoretical nature of language but by the act of doing, the impetus that transforms ineffable beams of energy into the medium of the two or three-dimensional object, modelling the performative nature of becoming against the static nature of being. According to Deleuze and Guattari, “the line does not connect two points, but runs between various points, rendering them indistinguishable”, hence the line “becomes a diagonal, breaking out of the captivity of the horizontal and the vertical”. The simultaneously introverted and impulsive world of the exhibition connects the internal with the external as a Möbius strip: István Nádler’s brushstrokes are a medium for the dynamism of the hand or, rather, the whole body, just as the surface of the sculptures is a medium for Sara Berti’s fingerprints. But the works on show superscribe the profane “interruptedness” (Bataille) of being thrown in the body, and point towards the sacrality of “continuity” – not through a reference to any specific religion or a personified God, but through an endeavour to achieve a vital completeness, bringing to the surface the unity of the ocean of awareness – exemplified by the sequential, repetitive flow of the sculptures and the graphic pieces as well.
The circularity and angle of incline of Sara Berti’s fragile figures, which balance at the borderline of being figurative, suggest an invisible axial presence; in the pictures of István Nádler, the vertical connecting sky and ground, indicative of the human entity, changes position in response to external movements like Foucault’s pendulum and often take on the body colours of Sara Berti’s forms that are kept secret by their material. The geometric or patterned motifs of the compositions of István Nádler and the interplay of the gestures that flow over them, and the opposed lines of force of the arching figures of Sara Berti generate a tension that does not create irresolvable conflict but rather a balance strung to the extreme: the internal curve of the human form is reminiscent of the Zen Buddhist meditation in which the body is the bow and the target for the arrow is enlightened awareness. Just as István Nádler’s compositions are mappings of relations beyond the material world, so Sara Berti’s small sculptures are not extremely reduced outlines of the image of the physical body, but rather transcendent projections of “the body without organs”: the abstraction of abstraction always leads into the realm of metaphysics – the intersection of converging lines is the seat of the incorporeal essence hidden in every person, the Self, which lives in us pure and imperturbable, whatever should happen to us.
Similarly to the cycle of piano pieces by György Ligeti (Musica Ricercata), the toolkit of the dialog built from the consonance of these two similar artistic Selves is sparse, but just right: the dialog between István Nádler and Sara Berti is built on the inexpressibility of that essential communication, so its true perception is not dependent on sense organs incapable of filtering out the “noise” of the external world, but rather a sensitive inner resonance.
