Inda Gallery at viennacontemporary 2018

Ilona Lovas An art of two worlds With a marked position in the postmodern art situation, Ilona Lovas has been at the forefront of conceptual art since the very start of her artistic career in the 1970s. Her special place in the scene, seen by many as an unparalleled chapter in the art history of the age, is defined by the fact that her practice has, from the very start, represented a unique exploratory combination of attention to the environment, an expression of the female position, social and political sensitivity and religious faith. Originally trained in textile art, then moving on to installations, video, photo-based works, unique combinations of a variety of materials and media including cow intestines, in images of a peculiar beauty and sensuality, she leads the viewer along a path of spiritual-emotional-intellectual journey, highly personal and universally relevant at the same time. Lovas in Vienna The body of works presented at Viennacontemporary are from the 2000s, and are representative of the most recent stages of Lovas’s highly consistent and organically coherent oeuvre. The Heads /SOS/ photo series (I-V, 2012) originate in the artist’s videos titled Have Mercy on Me (2005-6) and S.O.S (2006), where hat blocks (blocks of wood used by hatmakers) become abstractions of human heads. In the first video, the artist is seen on all fours, pushes a number of these faceless symbols of individuals along the floor, bumping into each other, forming spontaneous groups while some being left behind. She, herself, is also faceless, toiling in an endless effort to keep the heads moving, trying to give direction, repeating the sentence “Have mercy in me.” In the second video. S.O.S we see the hat blocks (heads) floating peacefully on the sea. There is no hand pushing them anymore, the artist is not present, we only hear echoing voices saying Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist prayers… Two Worlds (2002). As the title states clearly, two worlds meet in this combination of photography, holy communion wafers and dried cow intestines. Far from being illustrations of tenets or questions, Lovas’ works are the demonstrations of the natural connection, of the common nature or even the identicalness of the two worlds, the spiritual-conceptual and the material. The dualities of the world are represented here in a wide range of interrelated concepts. The images of the round wafer plates with holes cut out of them are each-other’s inverses (light and dark, positive and negative), and are therefore complementaries. At the same time, this material manifestation of immaterial sacrality meets here, through visual association, the world of science: computer punch cards – both materials (the wafer and the punch card) being carriers of messages. Meanwhile, the layer of cow intestines, wrapping all images in a skin-type cover, is also a tangible presence of a higher, universal design. A similar use of materials and expression of related concepts characterizes Together
(2008). 
The wafer plate’s image is perceived through several layers. The dried intestines as well as the glass are transparent – the carrier of the message, the reminder of the essence is seen through organic and inorganic matter (intestines and glass). Meanwhile, the transparency of the two types of materials also refers to their ultimately common source. Hands Belonging to Each Other (2012) are consistent in their use of materials with Two Worlds and also with Together. Part of a larger series of works on the theme of hands and later of soles, these hands are said to belong together. Nevertheless, we see them in two separate images, there is no body seen to connect them. Injured, cut, as if insufficiently protected by the intestines, they are held up in a gesture with multiple associations of defencelessness, openness, vulnerability, showing that they are unarmed, asking for protection, refuge or blessing (or maybe still giving blessing?, maybe ready to be turned towards each other in prayer?), it is hard to escape associations of contemporary history and politics. --- Lovas’s career began in the 1970s. Her lifework has been ever so varied in the objects and forms it has created, while equally consistent in its process. The source of this variety and of the clear consistency is the most immediate sensory-sensual connection – from the textile, in the artist’s early period, to pulp, water and wheat, to grass and metal and then to cow intestine –, with the natural processes embodied in materials, and an equally natural process of the same essence: the concreteness and symbolicness of the artistic work with these materials towards creating objects and towards representation. In Lovas’s work, matter is present in its sensual-perceptual form, shaped and sensed, while it is its own abstraction at the same time. This is also how it becomes suitable for rendering spiritual and conceptual content, which comes to assume an objectual presence and turn into objects of immediate and intellectually unreflected experience. And it is with the same naturalness that Lovas’ other works trace back to the spiritual our common experience manifest in the concrete visuality of the photo and the video, relating conceptual-spiritual content in concrete images to the most basic original and contemporary questions. www.indagaleria.hu https://www.ludwigmuseum.hu/en/author/lovas-ilona https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Ilona-Lovas/2213D12140358994 https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovas_Ilona (in Hungarian)