Attila DiénesBIPOLAR WORLD

SCULPTURES OF ORDER AND CHAOS

Exhibition of sculptor Attila Diénes in Veszprém

When approaching and describing works of art, one of our most important sources of help can be the artist himself, who with his ars poetics by formulating his theoretical creative theories and describing his creative intentions in relation to his works, can create a good basis for a relatively accurate interpretation that avoids misinterpretation. In this respect, we have excellent opportunities to interpret the oeuvre of the sculptor Attila Diénes, the output of a particular creative period or a work of outstanding importance: the artist regularly provides commentaries on his activities and detailed descriptions of his creative meditations. Thus, for example, in several publications accompanying his work and exhibitions, one can read the creative thought that is key to his sculpture and his entire oeuvre: 'Sculpture is a material that is imbued with the spirit, a lifeless ecstasy hammered into material, an emotion sweating on a polished surface, a feeling of life congealed into crystal, a magic, a message whose materiality is only true in its appearance. "/1. This thesis can bring us closer to the sculptures of Attila Diénes by the way it is formulated, by the style: because besides its theoretical, deep thoughtful aspects, the recipient can also be impressed by its poetic inspiration: the dazzle of life, the ecstasy hammered into matter, the emotion sweating on a polished surface and the feeling of life frozen into crystal could have been remembered by a lyrical poet.

In addition to the poetically inspired testimonies that capture the essence of his sculpture, this time we can also evoke the creative concept of this exhibition entitled Bipolar World: "Evolution is the defining foundation of our living world. The evolutionary struggle is for the survival of the genes of the individual. In societies, the struggle is for the survival of ideas, beliefs, possessions, power or memes, and as a result the mass (or human mass) is divided into two poles. This bipolar world is the philosophical background of many of my works."/2.  Well, finding the connection between the texts quoted and the meanings assigned by the texts is not an easy task: because the first is about art, while the second is about the bipolar, insane world dominated by , humanthat is, sculpture, which is truthful in its materiality, must formulate valid statements in this insane world. Thus, we can already draw the first important conclusion about Attila Diénes' sculptures: we are confronted with the work of an artist who does not just make his sculptures by following his fleeting impressions and whims, playing formal games and speculating on the chances of pleasing, but with a great deal of consciousness, programmatic and conceptual. Of course, we do not have to talk about the illustration or direct expression of the program or concept in connection with the Diénes sculptures, but about lively plastic objectifications that condense meanings, embody ideas, and radiate expressions by shaping the material, inhabiting and organizing the space. So: by means of its formal features and world of form, works related to the classical tradition of modern subject-making art, modern sculpture, relying on the basic values, but renewing its approach and methods with a modern approach, applying the materials, tools and techniques of the craft, mostly realized in the domain of abstraction to accept and interpret the works of Attila Diénes within the scope of their appeal, which prove - again we only refer to the artist - that "The sculpture is a concrete imprint of our spirit, a crystal, so to speak. The crystal is the timeless state of matter, where ORDER dominates CHAOS, thereby projecting the past into the future."/3.

Blurring and connecting the geographical distances between Marosvásárhely and Magyarpolány, Transylvania and Hungary in the artistic spheres, Dienes' work spanning five and a half decades is huge and covers many branches of sculptural genres and forms, and in certain cases and in certain periods applied to the areas, the artistic activity that also crosses over into the applied arts sectors. This narrow selection can only tangentially show the dimensions and characteristics of the oeuvre born in a creative milieu closely linked to the landscape that set him on his journey, the settlements of Transylvania, and since 1988 to the Hungarian, and within that, rural environment, Veszprém County and Magyarpolány in Bakonyalja, in which works created before and after the turn of the millennium are displayed in the same way as each work of this year. In other words, we can stand among the creations of a holiday, birthday, partial oeuvre exhibition. And all of this is just the exhibition sculpture, the small sculpture section: as important as a real sculptor, the works of Attila Diénes, which he was able to realize on a monumental scale, and among which we can count the monuments and commemorative portraits of settlements in Transylvania and Hungary, among them, the entire recent Hungarian with separate, memorable, special compositions, such as the war monument of Magyarpolány inaugurated in 1990, or the monument of the city of Ajka, created in 2009.

In a separate chapter we could discuss the works that are, in fact, unrealized monumental plans that mark his oeuvre: those created without a client or commission, formed exclusively in the spirit of plastic problems and independent creative thoughts, and the most abstract compositions, which can be counted as painful deficiencies in the Hungarian memorial material of this sector. These realized works and these works stuck in the plan, and the small sculptures of this exhibition collection, and the so-called his exhibition sculptures can also convince you that Attila Diénes is such an omniscient sculptor who masterfully works with different materials - stone, wood, bronze - in all forms of art, and uses different techniques to an unheard of high degree - and if we had to highlight something, then we would primarily be reminded of his professional marble carvings.

The sculptural world of Attila Diénes, sometimes departing from the human form, sometimes returning to it, wandering in the realms of naturalistic representation and abstraction, and also exploring the borderlands between them, is sometimes confronted with the statement of things, sometimes with the suggestion of things, while in many cases the compositions lead us into the associative realms of abstraction through the sculpted plastic object. In addition to the representational and abstract expression, another dichotomy is indicated by the fact that the organic character is as much a feature of this art-world as the geometric formal order that emerges. The presence of these dualities may be explained by the intention to capture and represent the essence of the bipolar world indicated in the title of the exhibition: the divergence of the big and the small, the good and the bad, the rich and the poor, the winners and the losers, the contrast and constant clash of life and death, peace and war, order and chaos, is at work in the deep layers of the works. While in organic compositions there are connections and synergies, in the bipolar contrast sculptures there are tensions, conflicts, oppositions and collisions. All these expressions reflecting the phenomena of the time, are animated by the aura of the sculptures' strange beauty, often wounded.

Perhaps the most accurate insight into the work of the Diénes can be found in a major work on the 100-year history of Transylvanian Hungarian fine art, edited by art historian Zoltán Vécsi Nagy and published in 2019 in Cluj-Napoca. "In the typically rounded forms and polished surfaces of his sculptures, he demonstrates the regularities of the world, the orderliness of the universe constituting the laws of nature, and the harmonizing power of art. The world of his sculptures embraces many of the elements that give meaning to life and sustain the foundations of human culture, from eroticism to myth, from metaphysics to genetics, and from intellectual strength and hardness to human curiosity about cosmic dimensions."/4.

May this curiosity guide us in approaching and understanding, processing and experiencing Dienes' works, which confront us with the mysterious world of our age, which are highly contradictory, which radiate plastic power and organise dynamic space. And on the occasion of the eightieth birthday, we wish the Master, who is still working so youthfully today, a happy birthday and many more years of creative work, decades of beautiful works.

                                                                                                                    Tibor Wehner

(Spoken on 15 October 2022 in Veszprém, in the Dubniczay Palace Castle Gallery of the House of Arts Veszprém, at the opening of the exhibition entitled Bipolar World, organized on the occasion of the 80th birthday of sculptor Attila Diénes. The exhibition is open until 27 November 2022.)
Notes:

/1. Katalin Gopcsa-Attila Diénes (eds.): Attila Diénes. Veszprém, 2009. Laczkó Dezső

     Museum. 5. p.

/2. Attila Diénes: Bipolar World. Exhibition concept. (Manuscript)

/3. Attila Diénes: On my Sculpture. (Manuscript)

/4. Zoltán Vécsi Nagy (ed.): Hungarian Fine Arts in Transylvania. 100 years. Cluj Napoca, 2019.

 School Foundation Publishing House. 396. p.