BOOK REVIEW

Istvan Orosz Plagaty - Posters - Plakatok Published by Rabbit & Solution, Bratislava (SK) (2002); Concept by Vladislav Rostoka, texts by G.D. O'Bonner, D. Polackova and M. Sylvestrova; 80 pages, 23 x 31 cm, about 100 color reproductions; hardcover; ISBN 80-88947-08-1; in slovak, english and hungarian A master of posters joins a master of book design to produce a really exceptional book. It includes a bibliography and a posterography of 182 works made between 1974 and 2001. Outstanding! The book accompanies an exhibition at the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava (SK) from Feb 19 - May 26, 2002

1978, Pencil knotted bowels

The following text by Marta Sylvestrova, curator of the poster collection of the Moravian Gallery in Brno (CZ) is reprinted, with permission, from the book: The poster work of Istvan Orosz encapsulates a personal mystique of irrationally beautiful visual illusions. In his hands, the poster becomes an artistic reflection of an idea, a poem without words. It affects our senses with appealing and fantastic images. The artist choses the form in accordance with his carefully selected topics. Visual parables sometimes exist in his mind long befor they materialize in association with a suitable poster theme. He uses them when opening his exhibitions of free and animated work. The core of Orosz' work consists of posters for art exhibitions, and for film and theater perfomances. In the symbolism of Orosz' posters, one perceives the visual essence of the absolute. Inspired by the master magicians of imagination, such as Arcimbolde, Magritte and Escher, the artist conjures sophiticated vistas of merging infinite spaces within the area of a poster, and bewitches the eye with anamorphoses of shape. Among Orosz' pictures, as they offer scraps of reality in unreal environments and visual illusions of mathematically precise perspective constructions, the observer may arrive at meditative conclusions on the relativity of human existence, and reach beyond the boundaries of more ordinary perceptions of reality. Through his work, Orosz discovers an internal, poetic view of the world, in which the artist-poet and the artist-scientist experience a vision of Verlainesque, delusive "insiioud, solitary moon". A misterious spark is ignited in the parables of merging a male and a female profile, a drastic fatefulness stares from a nailed-down look. Landscape is a body and a body is a landscape; space becomes matter and matter shapes an infinitely stretching space. The mysterious world of illusions in Orosz' pictures draws you into a perfect world, the irrational construction of which is hidden behind the aesthetics of the imagination and the lyricism of forgotten beauty.

1979, Istvan Orosz exhibition

1994, 13. Hungarian Textile Biennale

1996, The devils, by F. Dostoevskii

1996, Oidipus, by Sophokles

See also the book review of another Orosz catalogue, which includes a link list.

Please note that present web and monitor technology has not yet reached the standards of 16th century illustration. The above reproductions of Orosz' posters are therefore mere shadows of his original work. Sorry, Istvan.