A pencil box found in the rubbish out on the street sparked the interest of Hungarian artist István Haász in reliefs and objects. This object with its sub-divided elements and its dynamic play of shadows led to a series of objects that he embarked on in the 1990s.
Sometimes presented on the floor, sometimes on the wall, they all consist of fractured reliefs in varying shades of yellow involving geometrical forms – often parallelograms and trapezes – that jut out from the background at different angles. The arrangement of the individual elements leads to overlaps, paths and lines that have a fascinating relationship to the basic form. Depending on the viewer’s position and the angle of the incoming light, the surface is enlivened by carefully calculated light and shade effects. Having already occupied himself many years before with the fundamental question of space and surface in two dimensions – in works done in oil, acrylic and pastel depicting overlapping geometrical, monochrome surfaces – he has now chosen the colour yellow to capture the third-dimension. To his mind, yellow is best suited to conveying spatial relationships, and precisely in such carefully calculated geometrical compositions the vitality of the colour and the material is of great importance. Haász creates the body of his reliefs using wooden frames covered in newspaper and then sheathed with card. István Haász’s yellow structures have a marked architectural character to them, resembling as they do models of building complexes seen from a bird’s-eye view. And as the artist points out, the visual arts and architecture share an important theme: "proportion and harmony".
Biography
1946
born in Gönc [H] , lives and works in Budapest
1964-1968
Studied at the University of Education in Eger
1975-1979
Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest
since 1988
Lecturer at the Moholy Nagy University of Applied Arts in Budapest
1992
DAAD fellowship, Atelierhaus Worpswede
1996
Fellowship to the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York
2005
Visiting lecturer at the International Academy of Arts, Bremen-Vallauris
