Ildiko Dobranyi: Details
Suit later the need emerged to understand what is the meaning of this profession for me. I tried to create a "blank sheet" for myself and restart from scratch, from basic things. The topic of my exhibition in the National Gallery in 1977 was the contrasts. I used nothing but white and black and their transitional shades. I wanted to evolve on the effects of the contrasts of different textures, techniques and thickness of material. In the spatial tapestries here exhibited I set the material of the woven fabric against "nothing" as a study of the interaction of material and space. After this exhibition, I gradually renounced the use of merely white and black and used the three basic colours (red, yellow and blue) instead. My basic interests were the proportion of surface division, the creation of different rhythms of colours and proportions and the rhythm that penetrates all forms of life and fastens them into a chain with the universe. For rhythm is one of the most important components of the artefact. (poetry, prose, architecture, visual arts, etc, and naturally music). In my first striped tapestries I used the stripe as the most primitive decoration element and the most obvious from the point of view of weaving technique. The centre of my attention was the creation of stripe rhythm. Later on - mediating upon the fact that colours were first discovered in nature and that our ability to see colours is a miracle of nature itself - I started depicting foliages of trees the help of the three basic colours and stripe raster division ( see "Detail I.", "Detail from Detail I" etc.). These broken-up details from a picture only if looked at from a distance (special optic effect). I chose the foliage to present nature in my tapestries (exhibition in the palace of Exhibition, Dorottya street Gallery, Budapest - 1988). The GRASS serial (completed recently) embodies similar contents. I view this small scarcely noticed plant we thread on ( natural detail) as full of secrets and miracles. In the first serial, composed of miniatures (of 10x 10 cm / p/c.) where only one or two rippling blades of grass can be seen, I was simply intrigued by the light - shadow contrast of the green spots which is in some places soft, in others sharp. The second black and white serial (50x 50 cm / p/c.) was created around the theme of passing away and revival (its material: wool and silk). In the third serial by applying complementary colours íi tried to indicate the tension which is more and less "in the air" and is the including power and root of all living energy, process and movement (six, each 50 x 50 cm / p/c.). Each of these tapestries was made on the basis of photographic projects of real grass details. Nine years of art training, hard work and research of material, space and technique resulted in my renouncing my efforts to develop my own "individual pictorial language" or " particular colour composition" etc. I only try to depict details as exactly as I can with the help of photos, computer technology and raster division etc., and "cherish then with atonement" using the traditional centuries-old and sometimes enslaving technique of weaving.   |