Several works by the sculptor Tamás Melkovics are part of the MNB’s collection, three of which are now on display at the Gödöllő Applied Arts Workshop until 19 August. We caught up with the artist in between studios and asked him about his new plans.
New space, new things to do. How does this become true for you?
This current change of studios has been a long time coming and is working out for the best. Every relocation, especially when it comes to studios, involves a lot of work and difficulties, but it is also the beginning of a myriad of new processes of creation. Art Quarter Budapest (AQB), the location of my new studio, plays an important role in the Hungarian contemporary art scene. It is a well-established cultural undertaking, an important hub of Hungarian contemporary art, with open studios, events, exhibitions and concerts. It provides a space for creativity and attracts audiences interested in visual arts. Over the past 10 years, the AQB has grown enormously and is becoming increasingly recognised internationally as an institution. It is inspiring to create in such an environment.
You create modular systems, building up diverse, organically proliferating sculptures that can be assembled from the basic components. Why did you choose this creative method?
Building from modules is a consequence of the sculptingl processes I have worked through so far. This creative method is an important part of my current artistic method, although building from modules is a creative technique less typical of classical sculpture, it is compatible with the spirit of our times, the way the world works today. Among its many possible readings, the fact that I create objects from ready-made components is actually a reaction to accelerated temporality. Modularity is not exclusive, I’m also interested in other creative processes, but I haven’t exhausted of this train of thought yet. The more I progress along this path, the more modules and characters I have to compose with, and it is extremely exciting for me. It is in sculpture as it is for painters to explore and learn a colour palette. For me, it is the range of shapes that is expanding. I try to formulate each module so that there is long-term interoperability between the different sets of shapes. Ten years down the line, it will be quite an exciting situation when I compress all the characters I have created until then into one big composition, using connecting components.
You graduated about ten years ago, and 3D design and printing has moved far ahead since then. How does this apparently unavoidable technological development affect you?
I first encountered this technique about six years ago and then already felt it was an important knowledge base with enormous potential, but I only started to work with it extensively in around 2020. It allows very precise geometric formulation, and the formal articulation of the components that make up the structure within the interconnected systems is essential. If I create a composition from multiple components, small mistakes can easily add up, destibilising the whole. Little errors will always slip in, of course. I try to accept them as part of the process and learn from them.
3D printing is influencing not only sculpture, but also our industry, our material culture, our processes of creation, although it is still a rare in the world of classical sculpture. I basically see it as a technique, a kind of means to an end. For me it’s like a tool. I try to integrate and apply it in my form-building, remaining careful not to let it prevail and become dominant as a creative method, trying to keep a fine balance in my sculptingl processes. It wouldn’t do if one single thing overtook everything else in my work, no individual artistic technique should acquire monopoly. I try not to forget that for all its good qualities, this technique may also have some downsides.
What downsides do you mean?
What I mean is that the work of art can become impersonal, empty. For me, personal presence and the value of gestures are very important in visual art. The new techology is capable of completely erasing these from the creative process, it changes where the emphasis lies entirely.
How can we manage to preserve the personal touch of the creation?
It requires constant self-reflection. From time to time, I have to review how I work so that I don’t get bogged down in a single solution or style. I am constantly monitoring myself, introspecting, but this does not only apply to 3D printing techniques, of course.
Pictures to the right and left: A work by Tamás Melkovics at the Gödöllő Applied Art Workshop, part of the collection founded by the Central Bank of Hungary (Magyar Nemzeti Bank-MNB).
(Photo: Dávid Biró, courtesy of the Gödöllő Applied Art Workshop)
I have put together a list of expressions associated with your art; could you please share your thoughts with us about them? The first: proliferation.
For me, this is mostly associated with my first solo exhibition and the opening speech by József Tillmann. Whenever my work is mentioned in articles, the expressions of proliferation, emergence and unfolding are almost always used. It is important and nice to remember that someone understood so deeply what I was doing at the time. At the same time, proliferation has a double meaning. On the one hand it means something full of life, but on the other, there is a negative connotation: a progression out of control, which can lead to destruction.
The word „proliferation” also reminds me of the growth of your works, that they are typically becoming larger and larger, more and more complex sculptures.
One always tries to improve, to move beyond oneself. It’s not just me; our whole culture is like that. We try to outdo our own performance, but there’s an inherent implication that sooner or later this becomes an unsustainable sequence. Lately, the complexity of the work has really brought a change of scale, but I always try to find a healthy balance.
left picture: A work by Tamás Melkovics at the Gödöllő Applied Art Workshop, part of the collection founded by the Central Bank of Hungary (Magyar Nemzeti Bank-MNB).
(Photo: Dávid Biró, courtesy of the Gödöllő Applied Art Workshop)
Play is the following expression.
Playing is probably one of the most important starting points for me. In the years after graduation, I was kind of stuck, searching for a way forward, and the idea of playing helped me most in moving ahead. I thought of how I functioned as a child, without self-analysis and constant questioning. I tried to bring this to the surface for an instinctive functioning based on play. I was looking for a creative base that I felt comfortable with, that I could rely on as a solid starting point in my creative processes. This method still plays an importrant role in my work today.
And how about dream? While harking back to natural forms, there is something unreal about the system you have created.
I’m finding it more and more common to incorporate meaningful motifs into my compositions, even though the structures themselves are essentially made up of geometric components. The appearance of seemingly out-of-place things, hands, feet, heads and all kinds of associative elements in a very strict geometric scheme can create a kind of dreamlike image. Of course, that’s not my underlying intention.
right picture: A work by Tamás Melkovics at the Gödöllő Applied Art Workshop, part of the collection founded by the Central Bank of Hungary (Magyar Nemzeti Bank-MNB).
(Photo: Dávid Biró, courtesy of the Gödöllő Applied Art Workshop)
Some of your sculptures from the MNB Collection are exhibited in your joint exhibition with Patricia Kaliczka at the Gödöllő Applied Art Workshop.. Tell us about this exhibition.
Zsófi Hidasi, the curator of the exhibition, contacted each of us. Patrícia and I had not consulted beforehand, still a very exciting dialogue took shape between our exhibited works in the exhibition space. The pairing was a curatorial concept that has many exciting layers. Patricia’s work includes a delicate series of paintings on paper as well as two tableau paintings and I have three sculptures, all from the MNB collection. Two from the Alloy series, and a work called Blue Kit, which is the first work I consciously created as a deconstructable system. The title of the exhibition is Dialogue, and I leave it to the visitor to decipher it.
Are you a serialist artist? What is this Alloy series about?
Serialism in this sense, for me, refers to series of components, families of shapes. I have created six or seven of these series so far. The Alloy series was the first in which I used 3D design and 3D printing to create tools that I could then use to generatively build the components of the sculptures in a delegated industrial process. This is important because it focuses on the establishment of the relationship between the different modules and the composition process, rather than on the implementation of the individual components in the design process. This creative method is much more dynamic than classical sculptural techniques, and so it converges the creative dynamics of painting and music. It allows a kind of spatial improvisation.
At the Gödöllő exhibition your sculptures were accompanied by music. What does music mean to you?
Music and sculpture form interesting counterparts, since sculpture is a static, permanent story that can preserve its original content over long centuries, whereas a musical experience moves in a momentary temporality. If such a ranking can be made, I think that between arts, music is in first place, sculpture follows way behind.
How is music ahead of all?
In its immediacy, its unrepeatability, its lightness. Music helps us experience presence without having to struggle for it. A very natural and powerful spiritual foundation. I feel this much less in sculpture, despite the fact that it is an extremely important creative form for me.
What are you up to now? What else would you like to achieve?
I am currently preparing my next solo exhibition, which will open in November this year. There are also several joint exhibitions in preparation, which will be presented next year. Beyond maintaining my creative work, my long-term goal is to establish a studio that meets international standards with qualities expected in a world-class workspace.