WHAT'S BEHIND THE CURTAIN?
2005 I textil I 6x4 m
„The mural on the first floor of the Roman Sixtus zion has given the basic idea of our exhibition. From books dealing with the history of art it is known by everybody that Michelangelo painted the ceiling – at his relative early age – and then the Last Verdict onto the wall over the altar – at his older age. It is also generally acquainted that works created by famous Renaissance painters like Botticelli, Perugino, Pinturicchio, D. Ghirlandaio and others can be seen below the ceiling. But it is not notorious that the first floor is also painted. It represents a curtain, namely a row of drawn curtains next to each other. But what can be behind these mysterious curtains?
The curtain hides something or foreshadows the one behind it. It can be transparent or it can shield everything. It may hide the sun-rays, the dark night, the world outside. Behind it a wall, a door, a window, a dead-window, a picture, anything else could be found or some secret.
In penny dreadfuls we often come across burglars, murderers, lovers eavesdropping behind the curtain. This way the curtain is only the facade, we cannot know exactly or know it at all or we can only guess what might be found behind it. Curtain is the analogy of facade from the contrast-pair of facade and reality.”
Körösényi Tamás
„One possible aim of art is to look behind the reality, to show what is beyond the visible stuffs, what does the curtain of reality hide? Of course this supposes that something exists beyond the curtain that can be revealed or demonstrated, that could be made visible. Although it is also possible that nothing exists except for this curtain and this curtain is the picture itself. So what is behind the curtain?”
Szabó Ádám
I have closed one part of the Parthenon-frieze hall with a 6x4-metre-long white textile. Peeping behind the curtain was only possible via little slide fastener gaps, no entry was allowed.