. : LAJOS CSERI A MASTER OF BECOMING /Sándor Darányi/

Strange as it is, amidst the daily turmoil of this wide world, hustling toward yet another millennium, there is a small but inviting virtual oasis in time, waiting for the weary and the traveller like a garden in the sand. I almost said, inevitably. For there is some deeply disturbing inevitability, some fate-like quality in the transcendence radiating from Lajos Cseri's sculptures. Waiting for, and confronting us, they somehow refute to be simply classical or merely modern, defying categories to an extent where they become timeless. They simply are, in an astoundingly rich completeness, finished in every detail. Yet this complete oeuvre, these as well inviting as distanced portraits and busts are also secret-laden riddles in bronze. Their secret is philosophical. Moreover, it is wrapped in a contradiction.

Having said that, I don't simply ask you to absorb the tranquil beauty of Cséri's art, It is rather the sculptures themselves tempting one to absorb and consider them, accessing thereby sense through aesthetics, the essence of the human condition in the least human of all forms, material. What does being human mean, then? What constitutes our ultimate values? Instead of telling us, Cséri shows the, answer, leaving one alone with one's struggle for words proper. This is contradictory enough.

But once unpacked from their wrappings of silence, the statues also start telling a story not often heard in 1998 A. D. To begin with, in this catalogue and exhibition, they all share what I termed the royal fixation of attention, the meditative sight which is one with insight. Look at those memorials of female and male integrity in children or in adults their eyes, either closed or open, watch something we do not perceive. Somehow they see beyond us, ignoring our ignorance. They possess the answer to our questions unyielding to every attempt to verbalize it. Under the cover of classicism, this is homage to the oriental respect for eternity. Cséri's art doubtlessly has this Eastern quality, this atemporal, almost Egyptian solemnity, so closely related to the ever-asking silence of the Sphynx.

But further, hidden in his philosophical complexity, there is also a personal approach to time. Are we humans encapsulated in existence, confined to our being like prisoners on the death row? How is then anything else possiple, where do dynamism, harmony, the glory and the grace of life come from? The very philosophical category of a being is a static, rigid concept, the embodiment of monotony, and anyone who accepts his fate as one of them, is victimized by a misunderstanding. Hope, says Cseri, is in becoming. Life is not human without hope, existence is devoid of its essence without the bliss of change. But he who hopes is not a being anymore, but a becoming, belonging to a different and original philosophical category, the one that can alter everything. All the portraits Cséri offers as an evidence for his theorem are, morally and artistically, disarming, and I have little doubt that their

attention is focused on this essential quality, hidden from us in time. The contrast so striking about them is, that they compress temporality in space.

There are two deviations from the above canon, the bust of Alpha Diallo, a revolutionary and aristocratic poet and prince from Africa, and Kossuth's one, the latest fine piece of Cséri's unquestionable mastery of bronze. Apart from their being my own favorites, there is again more to them than meets the eye. For one thing, I adore this ever-young artist, the devoted rebel who successfully disguised himself as a civil servant for four decades, but who hopelessly reveals his true self every time he picks his subjects. For another, both busts fix moments in the artist's life when he, apparently, lost control over the rules he set for himself, and fell victim to his overwhelming emotions. Luckily so. Diallo's death-worn mask exposes the deepest nonverbal expressions of sadness, almost bringing the metal to tears. Cséri struggled with it for a long time, after learning about the tragic end of this dear friend of all who were privileged to know him. As for Kossuth, this portrait recalls the folk hero of liberty, the spirit of eternal return, deviantly contradicting cliches of a century and a half now. The leader of the Hungarian revolution and liberation war in 1848-49 is neither-the concerned politician nor the exiled patriot here, so dear to artists lacking Cséri's psychological finesse and, honestly, his sympathy for the subject. His Kossuth is rather a handsome man in his early thirties, in the spring of his life, with a hint of a smile in the eyes unparalleled in both this artist's collection of facial expressions, and in the tradition of displaying the leader of an emerging nation. As if Kossuth, off the record, said: ,,No soberness, no serious business today, please we are young, extraordinarily talented, life is wonderful, and so are women." More than being delightful, this statue is comment-like, almost anecdotal, funny, unexpected, slightly grotesque and refreshingly mocking the fundamental tragedy of existence, a favourite theme of Hungarian literary concerns since Madach. In this respect, it compares only to the sexy giggle of the murdered Queen Elizabeth of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, to be adored on Cseri's perhaps most beautiful medal he has cast lately.

His love for poetry, and reverence for accomplishment, clearly show in the two beautiful busts erected in the public at Hajduszoboszlo and Sarretudvari, in the very region where Cseri was born in 1928 and spent his childhood. Imre Nagy, the poet of his village is contemplating and confident. Erno Szep, the urban lyricist, worlds apart from the former, is shy, concerned and amazed. One wearing a coat and a hat, the other without them, both are exposed to the future, from where we are looking at them, their minds and selves wide open to what will inevitably follow. It is hard not to feel that in this inevitability, we face our own being as a consequence to their innocence and openness. It is a cathartic legacy to discover that we are the future in their eyes.