Kálmán Várady

Kálmán Várady, descended from Armenian Sinti and Roma, is a Rom who has travelled very far with a desire for danger. He studied free painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cologne with Professor Wolfgang Schriefer and became his master student from the mid-1980s. During this time and in the 1990s, he undertook numerous extensive journeys - among others to Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, the USA, Mexico, Senegal, Nigeria and Venezuela. These still have a decisive influence onthe content of his works today.

For Várady, being a nomad is therefore not an economic necessity or cliché fulfilment, but a pleasure, a broadening of horizons and an attitude to life. The content of Várady's art goes beyond the bourgeois concept of art. His works oscillate between painting, object, sculpture, installation and photography and are a continuous process of reconstitution. Depending on the context in which they are placed, works emerge in an ever new combination. From an accumulation of found objects grows a sculpture or object, often reminiscent of a shrine, altar or totemic figure. He artistically reflects and updates cults, rituals and myths, natural religions and magical processes from diverse, self-experienced continents. The darkness of the struggle for survival in these often very poor regions flows into the artworks. In chaos lies order, everything is of equal importance, the artistic method is composition, arrangement. Várady's figures, sculptures and objects have an animistic aesthetic quality. His work addresses magic as well as mystery, ritual and death. This includes processes of change such as weathering, "hanging" and "sacrificing", which lend specialness to the objects in the artistic process.

In general, Várady often refers to transience and death; the pistol bullets shown in the exhibition GYPSY WARRIORS symbolise the permanent danger in which one finds oneself as a human beingin general and as a Roma in particular. Gilded, they remind us of the preciousness of our lives. Significant for the understanding of Várady's works are also his humour and irony, which put the internalised gravity of his works into a different perspective; the gilded bullets, which could have meant his death, have a humorous component; for only by laughing can one free oneself from death.

After totemic art, the play with altars, magical figures and private cults had long been in the foreground, Várady increasingly thematised his Roma existence on an artistic-political level. For example, the photographic series of works "Familija" (2008) was created in reference to the typological registration of Sinti and Roma in the so-called Ritter Archive of the Rassenhygienische Forschungsstelle. It refers both to the actions of the National Socialists towards the "Gypsies" and to today's practice of identifying, categorising and defaming people. Because of his origins, it was natural for Várady to include himself and his six daughters as likenesses in this work of art. Seven people (the six daughters and the father) are photographed in today's police identification manner. The series consists of black and white photographs of the faces in frontal and profile view and comparative shots of the hands.The exhibition GYPSY WARRIORS shows another work by Várady that deals with the Porajmos: a used, poliment-gilded butcher's block with a deportation number stamped on it. It is a reminder of the millions of murdered Sinti and Roma, whose few possessions were then enriched by their butchers.