Biography
“Below you the Earth, above you the sky and the ladder is in you.” (Sándor Weöres)
Igor Prokop Eugen was born in Budapest in 1953. He graduated from the Teacher Training College in Eger as a teacher of Biology and drawing in 1978. He studied Biology at József Attila University of Arts between 1981 and 1983 in Szeged, then philosophy in 1984 in Budapest, film aesthetics in 1987 and between 1991 and 1993 he studied design at the University of Applied Arts. He studied and worked in New York, Heidelberg, Auckland and several other places of the world. Besides painting and drawing he has worked with glass as well for 20 years. The artist has gone through the phases of making lead-glass and tiffany. Fusing glass is the result of a more advanced technology. The process goes like this: the elements of glass coloured in the material are faceted with diamond burnishers and these pieces are melted together horizontally and vertically like a mosaic. The surfaces, panels and pictures reflect the natural forms seen during the author's trips through the eyes of a biologist-artist.
His trips:
- 1984 Cuba
- 1985 Mongolia, Caucasus
- 1989 USA, New York and Walhalla
- 1993 Germany, Heidelberg
- 1995 France, Paris
- 1996 Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Polinesia, USA
- 1997 Ireland, Scotland
- 1998 Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, USA
- 1999 Ireland, Portugal, Madeira
- 2000 Florida, Canada, Ireland
- 2001 New Zealand, Canada, USA - New York
- 2002 New Zealand, Tonga - Nukualofa
- 2003 New Zealand, Vanuatu - Port Villa
- 2004 New Zealand, Portugal, Canada
- 2005 New Zealand, Tunisia
Individual exhibitions:
- Budapest, Graz, Barcelona, Eger, New York, Berlin
- Kecskemét, Heidelberg, Salzburg, Debrecen
- Visegrád, Toronto, St. Pölten, Auckland
- Bécs,Cambridge
- Luxemburg
- Dublin,St.Petersburg,Montreal
- New York Agora Gallery
At present he lives and works in Visegrád.
Everything I do can be called a lifelong process of evolvement like everything at nature once evolved within a "natural order". My studies as well as my time as a teacher, but first of all my travels, have formed me. Like everyone I was created by the daily influences: my children, my friends, and all the surrounding social and personal problems. From this daily life originates my creative sense for responsibility: I feel responsible for our planet's imperfect looking future!
I sensed our Planet first of all visual, and connected my impressions with my strong interest for biology and my everlasting wish to travel. The urge to discover and the urge to create met at my soul. I traveled through many countries but how many did I not visit? I learned about the elemental, wild power of our oceans, the cradle of life itself. Then I became aware of the destruction by man. I saw the dead corals, the final extinction of uncounted creatures. At the small islands of the Pacific Ocean I became witness to the destruction of everything that should have been holy to us. These wonderful old and life giving reefs that we destroyed inspired me to formulate my feelings in order to oppose the destruction.
I traveled further: New Zealand, Australia, and America with its unique New York. I traveled through the old Europe that is connected with my soul and through the hot Africa with its hard but nevertheless human way of life. Indonesia with her unlimited sources of artists and wonders of nature helped me to understand our world, as did the drop of river water under my microscope - or the body of the ant, the blade of grass?all these systems and impressions go through the filter of my brain and everything flows further into my heart and my hands: the forms, the colors, and the connections.
Is the blade of grass with its efficiency not superior to any machine?
And what kind of wonder is the human being?
23000 breaths does he take each day, and he needs so many liters of pure water - pure water from his small habitat within our universe. You should think that this habitat would be perfect for him.
We are all tiny parts within the great, unbelievable and after all not understandable system. Every detail within this system is important, both in the physic as well as in the psychic world. Errors of the system (like my diseases) let me reflect about the connections within the system. Everything is connected - nothing is meaningless. It does matter how you live, what you create, if you are going to have children, and what you are going to leave to them and their children as well. It does matter how much enlightenment you achieve!
Every one of us has his own inner world made out of experience and personal learning within the system.
I want to preserve the past and to design the future.
I want to protect the universal systems and I would like to protect the teachings of those that have thought me everything: The ?Organon? by Aristoteles, Holbach, "On the road" by Kerouac, Jack London, Arnold Gehlen, Stephen Hawking and several other teachers from art, music, history and even from the internet. They all became guides on my way.
Our world permits no further mistakes. United mankind can solve its problems. We must work together! This is my final goal, the inspiration for my pictures: To create tolerant, creative and cooperative systems that are heading toward a spiritual unity. Everyone must learn and teach at his realm, everyone must learn to work together with the power of art. For it is only possible to compare the power of art to that of nature herself. - I.J. Prokop -
