Elevated Pictures
The Painting of Tamás Kopasz

The painting of Tamás Kopasz is interpreted by many people and in many ways–as normally the artworks of famous artists. Analytical, systematic, synoptic, funny writings or essays written in friendly ways deal with his artworks and creative activity. In the field of the growing oeuvre the fast multiplying texts create a more and more consistent structure, a kind of text-packing. The following writing can be determined as a typographical co-note, lingering beside the pattern of the spectacular “packaging”, the decorative rule of which is not so important, rather it attracts the attention on several directions.
Fortunately, Tamás Kopasz is more interested in the experience of the act of painting and in the strange painting procedure of a canvas than the current and fashionable art topics and trends. “I create not because somebody needs it” – the artist says. It means that he doesn’t seek for professional recognition. Tamás Kopasz concentrates on painting. Moreover, the latter quotation can be misunderstood if it is compared with his paintings which have only been skimmed. In this case one can draw a false conclusion: “Only the paint meets your will [...] the painter himself does not have any say”. However, Kopasz’s art is not the interesting re-enactment of abstract expressionism, nor he focuses on spontaneity nor on consummation of the paint’s own will. For him the canvas is not an “arena-battlefield” yet (Rosenberg), where the picture is becoming an action, rather –playing with words– turning back, or re-interpreting the process, he turns the action into picture. Perfect timing is a crucial part of this process.
Kopasz creates his artworks during “ecstatically” experienced act of painting, with other words, the painting born between the starting and finishing moments of a unique state of creating. The painter should recognize these two moments and should allow to “get carried away”, i. e. the mental awareness of recognition combines with passivity of self-giving. The artist however is not only a passive “user” of that ecstatic state he is rather its transformator as he has to harmonize the external force of rapture with the inner force of consciousness and the inherent possibilities in spontaneity. The state of ecstasy lasts until then, it should be upheld until the picture is not ready and it has to be ready while the ecstatic state holds, i. e. it is sustainable. The “floating interest…,” allows joining and seeing through all of them. This floating interest isn’t the effect of harmonizing the self-conscious and the nonconscious, rather attached to the focused ecstasy. Thanks to this interest, Ventos says, we are able to listen out and inner simultaneously, excluding the codes and symbols of our convictions and belief. “…”.
Kopasz does not prepare any precise plan, he does not work out his paintings with the help of sketches. When the process of painting starts, he would not know yet, what will happen. He cannot foresee, because he could not foresee, how the painting will develop, or, thinking it further, he could not know whether there will be a (“ready”) painting as there is no visible, planned aim or assurance that the process of creation ends successfully. We can only hope that!
Fear and stress of blind flying, for Kopasz, is not a paralyzing feeling, rather it is a psychical tuning. We can say that the fear takes part in controlling the artist. In the midst of work –as a unique “self-controlled signal transmitter”– it reminds him incessantly that there is a risk of interrupting the blessedness in any time. So then, at the end, it helps him to concentrate more and more on the intensive and attentive empathy of ecstatic state. The strangling excitement of the not planned, not known development of the image and the precise finishing, in other words, induces psychical and emotional tension between the euphoric happiness of the birth of the picture. If the two end values come closer to each other, thus, the process of equalization would start up, the quick heart-beat of the paintings would slow down and turn into mechanical and monotonous knocking. It is important to emphasize all of these because the art of Kopasz should be defined in contrast to the art, giving meaning to the applying sign of motoric movement as critical painting.
The art of Kopasz underlines the idea, which seems to be not too important for contemporary art, or, often directly unnecessary, thematizing the relation between picture size, mode of representation and topic. In the case of gesture paintings, due to the fact that they do not open windows to another illusory reality, and because of the paint traces refer to non- recognizable elements of reality, the quality of gestures (their intensity, direction, colour, dimension) and proportion is perceived and appreciated mainly – disproportion between gesture and painting surface. The dimension of the painting table – and sometimes its form – controls the gesture. The gesture, either uses up the available surface, or leaves it untouched, acts on the size of painting surface, but the gesture can be realized because of the so called overgrowing on the surface essentially. Between gesture and surface exits a strong connection. In most cases the surface size has meaning, when the canvas choice i. e. the exact setting of the playing field of the gesture-gestures, anticipates the painting. The dominancy of the canvas size can be unmade so that the painter does not consider the size of the painting surface as fixed size, he rather marks afterwards, then he underlines a detail and it will be named as a completed artwork. The dimensions do not belong to the ambitious post-works, completing the ecstatic works, but, incontestably, it is a conscious, closing intervention.
On the canvases of Kopasz carefully chosen details of endless diffusing, colour and stripe structures with immeasurable size can be seen. On the picture cuts ...   Read More