Impulses | Miklós Szőcs's TUI sculptures
"Under the glass bell jar of my solitary path, I was never interested in trends, fashions, or movements; it never occurred to me to join any artistic group, and unlike Tradition, I never felt the urge to ferment the intellectual soil of my own work with contemporary artistic impulses," says Miklós Szőcs TUI[1] with the self-assured determination that has defined his career from the beginning to the present day.
Miklós Szőcs TUI was born in Budapest in 1953. He completed his high school studies in evening classes and then graduated by correspondence. In his youth, he tried his hand at several professions, working as a mechanical instrument technician and in a graphic design workshop. In 1974, he was accepted to the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, but the strict academic framework did not suit him, so he left the institution after a short time. His choice meant that his artistic career would be marked not by following a renowned master, but by solitary experimentation and discovery. He developed his use of materials and his approach through years of hard work, progressing from shaping simpler objects to more sophisticated sculptural tasks.
His works retained their functional character for a long time—their applied artistic nature, if you will: toys, rocking horses, chess pieces, marionettes, and furniture came from his hands. In terms of form, they moved between realistic representation and fantasy, combining figurative character with refined ornamental qualities. TUIt's choice of materials has always been consistently linked to wood: natural grain, colors, and textures represent his primary means of expression. He likes to use special, rare, and sometimes extremely expensive woods, as well as various types of plywood for block-like carving. Objects, vessels, and furniture no longer derive their meaning from their usefulness; their unique atmosphere is created by the plastic power of their surfaces and the dynamics of light and shadow, and over time, the demand for them to become carriers of transcendent ideas has become increasingly prominent.
An early trip to Thailand in the 1980s was decisive for his artistic development. It was then that he realized that works of art cannot exist in isolation: everything is embedded in a cultural and artistic milieu that gives it meaning and context. This realization further deepened his interest in religious and spiritual traditions. He draws the spiritual sources of his art from both Eastern and Western high cultures; he does not merely quote or follow these traditions, but seeks the interconnectivity between them, the possibility of the flow of ideas. He is not exclusively attached to any one religious denomination or spiritual school; his approach is syncretic, stemming from the view that there is a common foundation at the heart of different systems of thought, which can be translated into visual form.
Schedule
The most characteristic motif used in the 1990s was the versatile treatment of animal figures (zebra, turtle, frog, iguana, baboon, cheetah, etc.). The culmination of this series was the artist's best-known masterpiece, Jaguar, completed at the end of the millennium. The viewer would probably never guess that the creation of the vibrant wooden lattice structure—which makes the animal sculpture both airy and dynamic—is preceded by modeling with plasticine, and that the final carved version is a meticulous freehand copy of this.
This sophisticated hollow form visually represents a concept that is very important to him and which can be found in many religions, namely that the body is the "vessel of the soul" and the soul is the "vessel of God." "For some time now, my works have essentially been vessels," says TUI, "which, with all their formal attractiveness, are merely the receptacle, shell for the higher, invisible force that manifests itself within them, and my two-headed figurative works seek to convey the balanced harmony of unity or wholeness that is revealed in the opposition of diversity. To this end, I strive for conceptual clarity and technical perfection."[2]
From the 2000s onwards, he turned more and more decisively towards more abstract, less verbalizable forms. Although he never completely rejected figurativeness, his works increasingly became abstract carriers of meaning. The visual connection between The Book of the Living (2007) and the book as an object is immediately recognizable, and the title—as an associative opposition to the Egyptian Book of the Dead—provides guidance for possible interpretations. With the pieces in the Knot series, the symbolic content of the works created since the 2000s has become increasingly hidden, and deciphering the creative thought behind the elemental beauty of the images requires more thorough contemplation on the part of the viewer. The titles and the interpretive passages formulated by the artist can aid in this contemplation.
Miklós Szőcs TUI has been a member of the Art Fund since 1984. He held his first solo exhibition in 1991 at the French Institute in Budapest and has since participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. In 2012, he was elected a corresponding member and then a full member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts. His work was recognized with the Mihály Munkácsy Prize in 2015, the Prima Primissima Prize in 2021, and the Kossuth Prize in 2024. He still lives and works in Budapest, resolutely following the artistic direction that his own motivations and the universal experience of traditions have shaped for him.
Zoltán Rockenbauer,
curator of the exhibition
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Kunsthalle Budapest
The largest exhibition hall in Budapest, in Heroes Square, just the opposite the Museum of Fine Arts.