NEW NEPAL SERIES

These works on paper are "prints on paper" and the paper is Nepali hand-made bark-paper.

The original thought with these series was to collect universal symbols such as mandala, swastika and others mainly for a contemporary story's sake in the year 2064 Anno Nepal ( Dec.2007 - Jan. 2008 )

For such stories to tell there is Mao in a pool of blood stamped by a sewer cover as on a passport photo. Surprisingly, when printing that cover on the street in Katmandu the passers-by stopping to look at seemed not to recognize the picture of the man in the hat - sadly they will learn too soon.

King of Diamonds - perhaps a fortune lost overnight on the wheel at the Casino.

Size doesn't matter, some say, it's the angle which counts. All is figured out in the Kama Sutra

The people and country of Nepal may carry and exemplify an everlasting human contradiction. These beautiful and pure eyes, the heart-breaking respect the traveler learns to receive and to express; at the same time within this archaic and magnificent environment the presence of self-destructing wild ignorance with an approaching Communist mob and a scheduled cultural revolution, shadows of disaster to come. A "special" state; passing states, states of mind.

All papers are from this historical moment of a chaotic but beautiful Nepal.

THE SEVENTH DAY - AN INITIATION

All words are abstract symbols. Such is the word "god" which aims to name something extraordinary and divine, something of an insight. It's a symbol.
So are the days, symbols for an interconnected continuum just as days and nights are.

The Biblical Genesis and its seven-day story is a "mind-map", its visual tool of contemplation is the six-pointed mandala, the Star of David. As a map it gives a thorough clarification of the inner qualities of the human mind, each of the days takes on the quality of the one that precedes it.

Day One shows in the most simplistic manner that the very basic pattern characterizing our thinking and perception is Dualism
Day Two qualifies Space as next, for anything with the mind appears in a quantity of space
Day Three suggests a subject-object relationship in our awareness interestingly continuing to maintain and widen the two previous qualities
Day Four talks about the relativity of Time explained as an organic part of a vast finite/infinite universe
Day Five explains a meditation technique. Turn this whole cosmology of demons and angels so that the below is behind you and the above is in front of you, and see that this is the past and the potential future.. The past is gone but if you direct energy into memories their "reality" pulls you down as luggage. The future is similarly a projection, the more energy one projects into a mind-fabrication - mixing present experiences and past memories - the more likely it will appear due to this creative quality of the mind. Meditating on this one realizes that there is only a Now. (There is no way to look back. Except one. Even if you turned your head to look behind your back physically speaking you are still looking ahead. But if you turned your eyes instead, looking cross eyed and squinting, and made a 180 degrees turn - with both eyes - after getting used to the dark on the bottom of the eye-socket there is a chance you may get a look through the blind-spot into the sparkling gray-matter of the brain. But this technique certainly belongs to a more advanced yogic school)
Day Six is a wonderful description of Maya which is many many many things, foremost the illusionary appearance of reality in the world of phenomena. Among the many key-words indicating certain qualities here one is that the meditator takes a distanced stance to the phenomenal flow as if elevating above it, ruling, dominating it. Another one is that at this point man has understood these "godly" qualities as his own and using this insight he is able to take a further step into the "beyond" or "god". Coming from this there is a realization that this world is created by you, it's all you
Then, Day Seven, as the observing point in the mind-map is the seventh the other six are the six previous qualities. It's the "being beyond" state of mind, something which in Zen Buddhist practice is the "drop the mind", Enlightenment with other words. The observer leans back realizing the full measure of the fact that there is nobody to blame, it's all up to you to make the effort and become what you really are - god, whatever that/you is.

ARTIST STATEMENT BY PETER SOLYMOSI 2001

The artist is a steamboat, he strives up-streams on the river towards the clean source... and there are some folks on the river-bank hitting the waves with sticks as the boat moves on, they scream to be heard or wish to be on board.

I painted my first painting within the first two weeks after arriving to New York City, a triptyc on the Hundson River. (See image at paintings) The city is surrounded by great light, bright yellows and glows and clear blues, everything shines of true hopefulness. The air is thick of humidity, its smell is feverish, hot. The sky is ready for action. I continued developing my vision and perfected the techniques by practicing, and I let everything inspire me.

I discovered formations in the pattern of the city plan. It's regular, it's rectangular, there are no short cuts. This is a basic pattern for the humans living here, their mind works according to the network of this environment. This beehive-like regularity seemed to be the only available and cultivated pattern in the city since the earliest times of the settelers. The piers on the rivers stick out into the water in the same manner as the buildings stick out into the air. The pilings under the piers are stuck into the riverbanks as the map of Manhattan, block by block, disciplined, organized in rows one after another as teeth of a giant creature. In the air there is inspiring negative space around the glass cubes. This pattern is the Rule

Echoes in cyberspace.

Bablablabla... bla
I paint, do printmaking (etchings) and develop photo series. Also since September 2001 started making small sculptings. I put together visual memories. I've been cultivating a certain intuition for redefining (Euclidean) geometry. I enjoy meditating by the riverfront and my paintings reflect on the rhythm and athmosphere seen there. The river as a symbol represents the flow of mind, its appearances and shapes change every second, therefore there is no such thing as East River in New York City but a drifting with the flow of images anchored in moods of realization. This city is a Beast, i.e. the collective mind of its inhabitants appears as a brute, instinctive creature.

The Roach Series
It's a sad story mut I have to tell you. I had a friend who was killed, his head smashed with a 45 lbs. (20 kg) sledgehammer some seventy times. I was in New York then, sleeping, and having dreams of him being in trouble. Waking up the morning there was a dead roach lying next to me on the floor. It was a messenger, and a very strange insect, so I kept it for anatomic studies. Two weeks later I heared about the death of this man... The very source of the roach image brings up fear. When you first encounter this 4" (10 cm) creature, you meet an alien civilization. There are four main life forms in the city: the rats, the roaches, humans and pigeons. Getting closer to cockroaches you can see that roaches are almost individuals - such as "Richie the Roach" who turned up once every sixth week to check out our kitchen. You can also see that they act upon a collective mind. Their universe - like ours, the humans' - is a hermetic system.

One of the other life forms around us is us, humans. It is said that "the city never sleeps", therefore it is alive even when you are alseep. Eight-eleven million people get up every day and say: "let's do it"! They give up something for their dreams, they let themselves be part of a collective creature, the Beast. The Beast is an instinctive way of being, a kind of super-ego radiating out of organic stuff. A primitive, unconsiuos matter of inertia. Goya depicts something similar in his paintings. Raw giants fight in the clouds while people flee the horrors and winds of war.

This super-ego is New York City. This is what we all dream about. It's not really what I imagine that is, it is what you/we all imagine together. The symbiosis of bugs, people and rodents. There are four groups of people here based on function. 1. The movers, such as delivery personel, waiters, cab-drivers and garbage carriers 2. The buerocrats or the suit people in black and white. They push on buttons and face screens 3. The entertainers, such as people on tv, actors, basketball players, musicians in bars and commercial artists ect. This is Corporate World. Retirement plan. The fourth group is "the outsiders", like tourists from Jersey during the weekend, the homeless under the cardboards and NYU students. I also see "the invisible people" here. The elderly. Or, when you usually take the subway at a certain hour, and you take the same train an hour later and see the people, you have no clue where they come from and where they go to and what they do. And, when a fasion wave moves through the city. You see people wearing the same. Or when you discover a commercial with some message and suddenly realize why people act the way they do.

The Spere Series
So I wanted to give this mind a form, I wanted to enter it, to turn it in and out. I carved into the plate and polished it over and over again and the "bubble" came to me. The viewer enters this ether of jelly, the mind of minds. He is transported through it guided by so called heavenly hangers or threads. Your relation to this is like when you let kites fly and you hold them and steer with care. The force pulling your hand is the sum and effect of physical energies around the kite. When seeing the Sphere imagine yourself being weightles and touch that thread. The heavenly hangers appear first in my "Annunciation at Szalki Sand Quarry" (see image). There they are referring to seismic sound cords - like strings in a music instrument.

Paperstein-Frankenstein Series
Then, I re-created "Paperstein". The pieces of different papers glued together as a larger sheet of matter gave the basis for the prints. I amed to cut through the limits of all preconceptual structures, choosing the force of a frontal collision. In the very moment the paper rolls through the press, under that air-tight pressure something happens. The subjective and objective realities meet on the plate and paper. It's a membrane, a drum. Once being in this superposition of mind, you reach out into different worlds, you determine destinies in blue and red and yellow and green. These prints are true windows on-to and in-to. These are holes in a wall. I can look out of my closed system. In that crucial moment when you change the world you should wish for the better. That's all, but it's not that easy all the time... In that decisive moment you might become aware of it. It just happens. Be aware. The form of things becomes transparent, you look through it as a bug sees through the window glass... but you are never there. The determining fact is your motivation. Try to focus. Be patient. Let them go - and dare to see

Peter Solymosi, Jan 2005, New Delhi

Artist Statement, September 2006


Of the Higher Path

In the morning the Artist woke up from a nightmare (he dreamt he was writing an artist statement) and sitting in the windshield on the high path he realized he woke up with himself sitting on his side, next to the Artist, himself.
“ Which one of us is real, tell me! The one who laughs on this absurd stage-set, or, the one who talks to himself?” and hearty laughter echoed above the valley bouncing amongst the peaks for long.
Here, they continued going higher up on the hills. “I walk next to myself” said the Artist. “Yes, I do.” Accept it and move on, fore
You could be below yourself, carry the dead as being a sunken ship, a wreckage, a junkie, a fallen one who tried and failed, yet not you anymore, broken apart… you are done.
Or be a self-killer? Poisoned himself, jumped the cliff or leaned into the sword, had suicides a thousand times before, again and again for he had enough of the same joke, away! Brake away!
Or, you are above yourself elevated in a rush of insight, the poets fly out that way, some heavily bomb the inner landscape, some are not even heard of they are so far out…. Above there being a spirit, the soul of a Superman; finally out of yourself in ecstasy…
And here I go, in polite and mutual distance to and with myself, orbiting my head.

And as we climb higher holding on to rocks and roots and thin air, the high peaks cast a sight on us and, when I look back… for the past is gone and non-existent while the future is only a memory… I look back and my eyes hurt for I look cross-eyed until I see through the blind spot.
The Artist became weary and the concern was annoyance, with himself. They sat down by both sides of a sparkling stream and looking deep into the eyes of the Artist:
He said, you stay, I can’t go.
“ I can’t go on with you” and without a farewell he shattered the mirror image, pushed himself, that one falling into the abyss as the dogs of the bottom howled of joy for they were indeed waiting for a fresh carcass. "The Artist is dead, long live the Artist!" they shouted and they licked his marrow and chewed on his intestines...

At last the Artist was alone and the silence pleased his heart. “This silence! As reason and result…” he thought.
Then a shepherd called Gaddi appeared on the nearby peak and it took a while ‘til he descended, and met him. They were glad to see each other, the one coming down, the other ascending. Gaddi spoke naught though, the Artist spoke naught, but the air and the sun and the rock and the birds and grass and clouds spoke, they all agreed upon this silence which was brought into light by the high mountains.
Then, Gaddi the shepherd and his two servant dogs moved away for new pastures of the hungry mind. He commanded his ninety-nine: “Go that way!” he spoke thus for sheep are deaf.
Alone again, the Artist shared the silence with the singing air hugging the ground face up and face down.
“ I was Gaddi once, my great-great-grand uncle and now I see him again, and we know what to say and to whom and when.”
“ I am the hundredth one, the one who run the ninety-nine never to return to you, sheep and dogs.”
Behold the self and go your ways while you can, and in distress and fall remember, there is a Higher Path!
“ A roadless road in spaceless space of timeless time”