Szilard Gaspar’s “First Museum Show” is a spectacular conclusion and a thrilling promise. Featuring a diversity of artistic media, from sculpture and installation to video, from performance to photography, the show is nevertheless tightly coherent and unified by a certain dominant atmosphere and by the particular attitude towards art making in which all the exhibited works are rooted.
Having serious experience as boxer and being an academically trained, visual artist, Gaspar has reached the point in his artistic development where he can be considered a mature, although really unusual sculptor and performer. He is not merely sculpting, modelling or casting; impressively and daringly, he is performing sculpture. His performative interactions with clay can be easily misunderstood by anyone who has no basic representation of the nature of fight sports and / or refuses to take into consideration the intensely educated talent and the exquisite physical and mental precision they actually require, when performed at advanced levels.
Gaspar’s art fits well in the history of performance art, which is saturated with artists expressing themselves in dynamic manners, via actions that often connote aggressiveness, exaltation or display some liberating emotional outburst. But such performances, even when they require endurance, for example, are still almost always unskilled or de-skilled in some sense, except for the cases in which some sort of professional performers (actors, dancers) are involved. To the contrary, Gaspar’s stake is to displace and re-contextualize solid, highly specific skills, to make boxing skills, moves and specific beauty migrate into the realm of art, without simplification or compromise, and to be deployed for expressing new meanings. His aim is not to exuberantly let emotions out, but to precisely master physical explosiveness and body dynamics, in order to meet aesthetic ends. This is no second rate, care-free therapy of sorts; this is about mind and body being conjugated in a strenuous effort aimed at making inert matter yield into providing meaning.
Literally and culturally, the boxing ring is concomitantly an object, a place and a visual metaphor. It hosts and symbolizes overcoming fears, pushing the limits, confronting an adversary, but, more importantly, adversity as such. It provides and represents the limitations that human beings can use and most likely need, in order to activate, to manifest their potential, to bring into actual existence more than they are normally capable of, to really know themselves. The sculptural objects in the exhibition pertain to this semantic realm, they allude to effort and pain, as well as to the meaningfulness of overcoming them. The exhibited photographic images are related to his dynamic performances, but they do not merely document them, but also bring into existence new dimensions of their aesthetic potential. They are at the same time elegantly painterly and tactilely sculptural, testimonies of dynamic actions and arresting images in themselves; the large sized images possess a monumental quality that tensely enhance their inherent, visual finesse. Objects and images conceptually and visually work together in an exhibition that is ultimately a well-rounded embodiment of a process, of a contiguous series of creative acts.
“Flow state describes the mental state of someone who is fully immersed in a specific activity, being almost completely oblivious of all the rest of reality. Flow is a state of concentration and energetic engagement, however, one in which the person enjoys what he or she is doing to the point of losing track of time, as well as interest for anything else, other than the performed activity, which he or she considers important and deeply meaningful.
“Flow State. Betuker / Gaspar” brings together two artists for whom working in manners that presuppose a full immersion in the process of making art is utterly important, although their approaches are as different as one could imagine: if Betuker Istvan roots his art in a very focused and personal practice of painting, Gaspar Szilard draws on his experience as a boxer to dynamize his use of sculptural materials. The exhibition features a diverse array of artistic media: from painting to sculpture, from photography to performance. The art on display looks deceivingly effortless and unsophisticated. There are simple topics and even traditional genres here, accompanied by simple actions, by a particular dynamism exerted upon traditionally “artistic” materials. The spectacular quality of simplicity is the main takeaway, as one is reminded that good art’s simplicity (like that of sports or craftsmanship) is born out of sophisticated mastery of skill and that its elegance doesn’t need to appear complicated, in order to be acknowledged.” – Bogdan Iacob, curator
Szilard Gaspar
23.02.1991
email: gaspar.m.szilard@gmail.com
website: http://szilardgaspar.com
Cluj-Napoca, Romania
address: str. Fabricii de Chibrituri 9A
Education
2015 – 2020: PhD in Visual Arts, “The Body in Motion in the
Contemporary Art” University of Arts & Design, Cluj-Napoca
2013 – 2015: Master Degree in Sculpture, University of Arts &
Design, Cluj-Napoca
2010 – 2013: Bachelor Degree in Ceramics, University of Arts &
Design, Cluj-Napoca
2010: Highschool of Arts “Aurel Popp” Satu-Mare
Exhibitions
2020 – “Stare De Gratie “ Betuker / Gaspar Sector1 Gallery / Zorzini F Gallery București
2020 – “First Museum Show “Szilard Gaspar, Art Museum Cluj Napoca, Solo Show
2020 – “Shadow Boxing “ Live Performance, Word Art Tokyo , Group Show
2020 – “Art in Context, Group Show , China , Pingyao Art Museum
2019 – “The Night Watch”, Art Museum Cluj-Napoca, Group Show
2019 – “Human Punch Bag” , Performance Day, Cluj Napoca
2018 – Szilard Gaspar and Dan Măciucă, Duo Show, Zorzini F Gallery
2018 – „Fresh Paint” Artfair, Zorzini F Gallery, Group Show, TelAviv
2018 – „Artiștii Galeriei “ Zorzini F Gallery, Group Show
2018 – „Volta” Basel, Zorzini F Gallery, Group Show
2018 – „Contemporary Istanbul “ Zorzini F Gallery, Group Show
2017 -„Blindfolded”, Zorzini F Gallery, Solo Show,„ Volta“ NewYork
2017 – Gallery Francoise Livinec, Group Show, Paris Art Fair
2017 – Gallery Francoise Livinec, Group Show, Paris „Écoledesfilles”
2017 – Art Market Budapest, Group Show, Zorzini Gallery
2017 – Muzeul de Artă Cluj-Napopca, GroupShow
2017 – Gallery Zorzini, Group Show, București
2017 – Anna Chioi, Daemyung’s Gallery, Group Show, Soeul, Coreea
2017 – „Clay Cube” Live Performance, Solo Show, Seoul, Coreea
2016 – „Eastern Promises.Chapter 2”, Group Show, Romanian Institute Lisabona, Portugal
2016 – „Fresh Paint” Tel-Aviv, Zorzini F Glallery, Solo show
2016 – „Art Capital “ Group Show, Gulyas Gabor, Szent Endre
2016 – „Crossroad”, Zorzini F Gallery, Group Show, London
2016 – Live Performance, Zorzini F Gallery, Solo show, London
2016 – „Full Contact Matter”, Zorzini F Gallery, GroupShow,„ Yia”Paris Art Fair
2016 – „Berlin In Cluj 2“,Gara Mica,Group Show, Cluj-Napoca
2016 – “Blindfolded “, Zorzini F Gallery, Solo Show, București
2015 – „Full Contact Matter”,Solo Show, Zorzini F Gallery București
2015 – „Action Painting“, Art Safari, Group Show, București
2015 – „Personal Traces”, Expomaraton, Solo Show, Cluj-Napoca
2015 – “Artencounters”, Group Show, Timișoara
2015 – Art Market, Zorzini F Gallery, Group Show, Budapest
2015 – „Berlin In Cluj”, Gara Mica, Group Show, Cluj-Napoca
2015 – „Eastern Promises.Chapter1”, Group Show,Romanian Institute Vienna, Austria
2014 – Muzeul Județean, SatuMare
2014 – „The Ring“,Galeria Bazis, Cluj-Napoca
2014 – „The Line”, Szatmárnémeti
2014 – „The Ring“,Flash Art Hungary, Budapest
2014 – „After Work”,Galeria Minerva, Cluj-Napoca
2013 – ExpoTransilvania, Cluj-Napoca
2010 – Muzeul Județean, Satu Mare
Prizes and Grants
2013 – KezdoMuveszek Dijazasa, Szatmarnemeti
2015 – Expomaraton grant, Galeriei Plan B
2015/18 – Grant,Fundația Comunitas
2017 – Grant, Galeria Plan B, Belrin
2017 – Grant,AnnaChioi,Daemyung’s Gallery,Soeul,Coreea
2018 – Grant, Gagosian Gallery, Roma
Lectures & Workshops
2017 – University of Arts Cluj-Napoca, Romania
– Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
– Korea University School of Arts and Design, Seoul, Korea
2005-2015 – professional boxing
– 147 official boxing matches, 116 victories
2015-present – personal boxing trainer
Languages
Hungarian – mother tongue
Romanian – fluent, level C2
English – advanced level C1
German – beginner, level B1