The Perfect Object

21. October 2022. – 11. November
MegnyitóOpening: October 20, 2022, 6:00 pm
MegnyitjaRemarks by: Kollár Dalma Eszter

Bella Pál’s recent work is about the examination of the object from an outward pont of view. The proportional systems of the forms she creates are always born from the pursuit of perfection. Her work can be interpreted as a gesture of creating an immaculate form. However, the object is only a mediator: for her, the arrangements of the shapes and the shades of colours are primarily the aesthetic expressions of her thoughts and feelings. The definition of the „body” play an important role in her art while searching for an immaculate form: the organism of a living being, in its material nature and external physical form, as well as the totality of its own processes that is a mass of materials occupying a certain part of space forming a unit, clearly separated from other materials.

Our word „lifetime” comes from the close connection between the concepts of body and life, basically refers to the material that remaining unchanged: it indicates the average time of existence of a living being or the length of the useful life of an object. What can be the time length, the immutability that we can consider short or long? And how can the lifetime of a certain body or an object be determined? While creating her installations, the artist revives the possibility of coincidences overriding generality and playing with the relativity of time. One of her inspirations is Luca Pacioli’s book titled Divina Proportione analysing the relationship between science and art; it has inspired many other visual artists including Ólafur Elíasson who became well-known for his large-scale sculptures, installations and lamps made of various natural elements. Her other inspiration was a six-week trip to Peru where she repeatedly found herself in the position of having to detect the authenticity of an object. 

The shapes of the objects on display are given by one of Bella Pál’s guiding motifs, the crystal structure, as the unquestionable aesthetics, regular structure and everlasting value of minerals and crystals have always been attractive to her. The form she built is an enlarged, imprecise, and therefore subjective, abstract copy of an original rock crystal. However, the crystal as a symbol basically brings to mind an aesthetic, beautiful and regular shape, since gemstones are naturally occurring minerals that have earn the approval and distinctive value judgment of humankind based on their beauty, rarity, appropriate hardness and durability. Her intention with the shape of the crystals is nothing more than to add a structure that is pleasing to the eye in itself, as can be seen, for instance, in the case of Jean-Michel Othoniel, a French visual artist. The main components of Bella Pál’s artworks – glass, wood and different types of recycled leather – not only fill space but also absorb it through the dark, pointed, prickly parts of the objects. The inaccuracy that appear during the realisation of the planned starting models can be considered to „the artist touch” or even the imprints of nature: they are all integrated into the original works and move forward the continuously evolving crystal compositions. 

As Friedrich Schiller recognised: „What would even a plain flower, a spring, a mossy stone, the chirping of birds, the buzzing of bees, etcetera, have in itself so charming for us? What could give it any claim upon our love? It is not these objects, it is an idea represented through them, which we love in them. We love in them the quietly working life, the calm effects from out itself, existence under its own laws, the inner necessity, the eternal unity with itself.”