József Gyécsek's painting

József Gyécsek's painting expands and grows richer with slow, subtle, hardly observable changes and conquers for his paintings those scenes of the world perceptible to our senses which he has already stalked.

His materials: sackcloth, packthread, glue, plywood, oil colour, chalk, graphite, paper, copper, brass and brass plate. He tears, cuts, binds, screws, threads the edge of the canvas, sticks, primes, he applies mass with hand or with a spatula. He paints at once or in more layers, uses glaze or scribbles. He makes use of luck and contingency. The fallible, patched, torn waste-canvases, which are stuck on the picture bring the sight closer to the spectator, they resemble familiar sensations of touching and bring back obscure memories. Sometimes painting does nothing more but emphasizes the spatial elements of the relief-composition made up of patches, sewings and threads. József Gyécsek knows that a surface should not be burdened with more than it can take optimally. Some of his paintings are imbued with a kind of ease. The quantity, weight and proportion of shapes, colours and formations are calmly considered. It can be suspected that the seemingly simpliest, elegantly executed compositions gave him a hard time. Each painting is a peculiar colour-constellation, shaped in a determined, unquestionable way.

The paintings of the last few years represent systems, which can be continued beyond the surface of the painting towards infinity. The painting is a result of the previous one and during its formation, behind the thoughts, the next one is shaping itself. This new painting will feature those patterns, shades of colour and emphasises, the notion of which came up while working. The square paintings can be regarded as a set of variation. However, I tend to think that these hypotheses, formulated and solved with the paintings are as many independent, serious and desperate attempts to grasp something that the painter feels bigger than himself and with his familiar devices he feels the outcome of the fight uncertain. This state of creation, in which the painter experiences the solution of the painting difficult, maybe impossible, is the cause and guarantee for the spectator to feel more and more initiated while watching the paintings lining up next to one another.

From the best ones, the greyish-white patch system stands out, where we can see - through the tears between the vertically flowing elements - into a blinding light-space, situated behind. Here, the patches are not found surfaces but floating, free associations. These paintings are rarely polichrome. The scarcely moved patch-surface, which reaches a very quiet, almost imperceptibly fine colour-field at the edge of the painting at one place returns several times.

The spectator might as well think that what they see is the ultimate result of a ten-year-long creative and searching process, which can not be heightened any further.

What is yet to come?

Pécs, 22nd Sept. 2003

Ilona Keserü
painter