OPENING TEXT BY ISTVÁN KEMÉNY

Dear Visitors,

This exhibition is the third best presentation of the material you can see here. It could be made even more ideal in two ways. One, if Kinga Ráthonyi was given a park, say the Tabán (and perhaps the northern side of Gellért Hill) and a kiln the size of a living room (let’s not mention clay prices but, of course, she would also get some clay too) and she could make the material of this exhibition of such a dimension that you could lay or sit on the porcelain beds, stand on the Plateau and embrace the neck of the swans. Or you could take a walk under the porcelain clouds without bumping your head into them. Because you would definitely like to walk in this park. And it would not be a park anymore but a garden, what is more, a Garden with a capital “G”, where all these objects would be placed, the pillows separately, and each of them could be found in the middle of a stand of trees, behind a hedgerow of boxwood, or on the top of Citadel. Nobody would know the exact number of the objects in the Garden because even satellite images may be forged and you can only believe your own eyes. So, there would be a garden in the middle of Budapest, where Kinga’s statues live. The other ideal solution would be if these statuettes could exist in a very-very tiny size too. If these metal plates could be pushed under or over each other like drawers and they would make up a commode which would be the size of a pendant that could be worn on a necklace. It could be completed with a pair of earrings to make up a set – there could be little tweezers and a magnifying glass to open the drawers and show and marvel at the almost microscopic statuettes.

Either solution would do because as a result, these exhibits which can be seen here and will get scattered as all exhibition materials do, would stay together. These statuettes are touching and moving and wonderful. And this exhibition as a whole is hypnotic.

It forces me to begin looking for the Total, to find out stories, and complement the details. It is enough, for example, to indicate that the protagonist, the Dotty Little Girl has her own way (see the little red knockout walking on a paved road), and another statuette where a road can be seen (in front of Titanik Bar) is enough and it is already clear that this road is winding here, near the statuettes, and you can see two small sections only because there is no need for more: the chain of association is ready, it is the road linking the statues. You associate that the road where the little red bomber is standing goes across a little aircraft carrier too, and there it is a flight deck in fact. Some 20 more statuettes underpin the aircraft carrier version which are ships and islands and swans and you can link the entire exhibition into a chain of association with the ship as its main motive. And there can be about three more chains of association on which all these statuettes could be arranged.
Perhaps everybody agrees that watching these statuettes you can see an entire world. But there may be somebody saying this is the world of a child and that’s all. This is another explanation but it is not enough. Because these “tales” are interpreted by an adult. The “big dark forest” is the forest of Dante on “halfway of human life”. You may think that the Dotty Babe has not been in that forest yet, or she doesn’t even know what is behind her. But as she is standing there with her back to the big and dark, you have the feeling that she has. And now she has just come out to have some fresh air (gasp for breath?) and stopped with her back to the forest and she knows that she will return there.
You feel fatefulness. Why exactly?
Any sculpture may crack or even fall apart. One, however, who makes statuettes from porcelain (ceramics) has a special round with fate after sculpting a figurine. There is a moment, the one of opening the kiln and what is inside is independent of the artist and dependent on the mood of the kiln only. The whole stuff may crack, melt, or even explode. During firing a judgement takes place. It is a crucible. The kiln has an idea and sometimes spits out strange, deformed statuettes, for example a half-melted black swan. Or it can split the sky into two, although the sculptor has carefully supported that with two sky-holding columns so that it did not fall to the ground. But the kiln just grins in its own way and breaks down the part of the sky with the airplane, so the flight turns into a dive. Or cuts/melts a white swan into two. Sometimes it simply cracks a court. But if the kiln is in good spirit, it can be positive: for example, a swan who, according to the sculptor’s original intent, was just to stand on the waterfront, came out of the kiln with its beak sunk into the water.

The Dotty Babe, no matter how fabulous and naïve her spotted little babeness may seem, actually lives in a post-judgement (post-firing) world. In a world that has undergone a firing process. She was also fired, yet she did not get burnt out.

These statuettes make us live her life. She gets into stories and situations, she thinks and feels. Instead of acting she just happens and exists. She has a family and life, plans and desires. She has clouds, and the clouds have their human names, and she has dark clouds with storybook quotes. And there are Baltic sunset-clouds with drama quotes. And she has clouds that are held by columns. Cloud-holding pillars which can also become sky-holding supports if necessary. And she has a cloud curtain, made from unnamed and unsigned clouds. And the Dotty Babe has a forest too, the “big dark” and she is standing at its edge. And she has different shapes as well: as a ship she is a mother, as an airplane she is a little red bomber it is not clear if the six coffee-bean-like bombers are chasing her or she is their leader. And she has a seesaw too: taking into account scale of bodies, it is a block of stone of roughly 6 cubic meters and fifteen tons. The Dotty Babe must have leaned against it and, as the title of the statuette shows, the stone block obeyed and obediently fell over. And when I look at this fallen-over block that resembles a seesaw, it is small and mighty at the same time, I feel its weight, but at the same time I know how light it is, and I suddenly feel as if I saw something which is not a statuette. I get hypnotized. I feel like doing several things at the same time. I am looking at a statuette, I think of a statuette. I am reading a statuette. I have always guessed that Kinga Ráthonyi's statuettes are poems made from porcelain. But now I am certain about it.

Dear Visitors, I hereby open Kinga Ráthonyi's book of poems.

István Kemény