Lujza Gecser (1943-1988) was one of the most original and radical representatives of Hungarian experimental textile art. In addition to her involvement in a number of large-scale national and international textile art shows, she was a frequent exhibitor of the Szombathely Textile Biennial network.
She was also one of the most regular participants of the Textile Art Worksop of Velem (1975-1983). By the turn of the eighties, Gecser – like so many of her peers, including Anikó Bajkó, Gabriella Farkas, Judit Gink, Kati Gulyás, Ilona Lovas and Csilla Kelecsényi – had travelled the long path leading to various modes of conceptual art, to a complete break from the applied roots of textile art, and to autonomous artistic thinking, in which the new media, especially experimental film, environment and installation, played a major role.
In recent years, the acb Gallery has paid particular attention to Hungarian experimental textile art, its achievements and its role within the context of the neo-avantgarde/post-avantgarde canon. This exhibition of Lujza Gecser’s works, selected from her estate and displayed for the first time in the spaces of the acb, continues in this vein.
The show held at acb Attachment focuses on the initial period of the Gecser’s career that had set her on the path of radical experimentation, with some of the works dating back to the very beginning. Her paper-based works consists of material-collages, demonstrating modes of encounter between drawing/graphic art and textile design, both of which were deeply defining in her oeuvre.
The exhibition also includes her film made jointly with András Szirtes, orienting us forward to the Gecser’s mature, experimental works in the seventies, pointing viewers to her later, mature, experimental works in the seventies. Entitled Mirror Reflections (1981-82), the film – utilising various types of foil, as well as sateen and mirrors, and building on everything the artist had learned from her experiments with synthetic, transparent and non-transparent materials – was shot in, and about, the environment she set up in the attic space of the Velem Workshop.