It is often written and said that visual art is a personal, solitary activity. This, like all clichés, contains some fundamental truth. But there are exceptions. A couple of artists can think together on a joint work and a joint exhibition.
This is how Ágnes Deli and Endre Gaál have prepared this succinct, to the point exhibition. Both are also presenting works of their own individual inspiration and a joint work. They must apply this ensemble to the space, and this too requires joint thinking, because both the works and the space demand their own.
The resulting proportionality must be respected, to avoid both a sense of narrowness and a sense of discomfort. A common feature of the individual works is that they are related to vision: a glass horizon opening up through a narrow gap or – depending on the point of view and the mood – the opposite: a darkening glass horizon and the huge eye made of a heavy pile of wood watching us from the end of the room are both metaphors of vision.
And the collective work is a three-storey casual construction that at first sight seems unstable, each ‘floor’ of which speaks of a different subject and awaits the visitor’s decipherment. Different materials, craft techniques and cultural levels are juxtaposed, but one cannot fail to notice the unifying and summarising intention. This construction is balanced not merely by the composing force that arranges objects and forms, but by the combined presence of time lived and history.
Gábor Andrási