Gábor Városi - Stories, Artworks, Artistic periods

263 Champagne in the Snow ART HOME BUDAPEST And that is what Városi is like. It has happened to him, I would not rule it out, maybe more than once. The champagne glass held at the optimum is a metaphor for perfectionism, based on deeply grounded experience. What is more natural, then, that the creator, grinding between extreme values, between insurmountably conflicting commands of life, should juxtapose the spirit of Buddha with a sensual greed heightened to the point of ecstasy. Quotations and allusions from a Tibetan mantra recur at various points in the building, with which a different kind of attention takes up space in the house. The seasonal shifts in the changes of nature, experienced directly through the all-glass walls, also evoke a sense of seriousness. As a kind of memento mori, the falling leaves of autumn, the budding blades of spring grass, the lush leaf shoots trying to emerge from sticky buds, are a second-by-second reminder to the inhabitants of the house. It is worth living in a way that preserves the serenity clad in these walls. To treat the importance of the joy of life with gravity. And then to balance all this knowledge with a fearless reverence for death. Because that too is there in this house, built with a vibrant love of life. It is there in its details, its materials, its spaces and its terraces, flowing everywhere. If it were not like this, the house would be just a house. A good house which, once out of the hands of the artist, is inevitably more than just itself. It is more than the function it serves and solves with its spaces. It is more than the self-reflexive references of architecture with which a traditional architect tends to situate himself within the world of architecture. But this house is a cheerful–serious work of art. And that is that. Architects: Szabolcs Nagy-Miticzky Bence Sárkány Iván András Bojár art historian, architectural critic, writer

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