Kata Gaál: Tipping Point

Kata Gaál (b. Budapest, 1984) graduated in 2017 in Graphic Arts from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. She has always maintained an autonomous and experimental approach to her work where she creates a characteristic visual world. Her highly individual collage and montage techniques require special materials that she builds into the artworks and from which she constructs interesting and relief-like surfaces onto wooden panels. Kata Gaál writes her stories in the material. The recycled wooden boards that form the basis of the compositions are in themselves the carriers of stories, as are the materials on them – glossy chocolate paper, plastic, lace – which are given a new quality and role in the scenes depicted.

Her compositions usually reflect her own experiences, so in her works we can see the actual universal questions in which she is interested. Already in her monumental diploma work Unstable, which will be on view again, a strong voice of social criticism is evident. There she explores male and female stereotypes and roles; later mothers and children became the focus of her interest.

Reality, a fairy-tale world and virtual space come together in her latest works. They reveal uncertain situations and confusing human relationships. Pins, trademarks of Kata Gaál, continue to cover the images. In addition to their role of fixing material, Gaál thus reinforces the message that clothes define their wearers. There is a potent feeling contained in the needles that we are nailed up, stiffened into a situation. Our clothes carry our qualities, where we come from, how we live our everyday lives. They seal us.