An-Bar

Dániel Nagy: An-Bar

(2022, Handshake Europe Sculpture Park)

The oldest known word for „iron” is the Sumerian AN-BAR, which is made up of the pictograms for „sky” and „fire”.

The sculpture builds on the properties of the industrial raw material: the rawness and brittleness of metal, and transforms them into organic formality. In my work, the industrial and the organic characteristics are presented at the same time. This is a transforming organic form growing out of an exact prism, which exist in close interaction and leave their mark on each other.

The artist

Dániel Nagy

Dániel Nagy was born in 1994 in Szolnok. He obtained his diploma from the sculpture department of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, under the guidance of Zoltán Karmó. His thesis earned him the Tamás Vígh award for the best sculpture thesis. He has participated in numerous domestic and international exhibitions, including those in Slovakia, Poland, and India. In addition to being archived at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, his works can also be found in private collections.

Nagy's work explores the role of gesture in sculpture. Unlike painting, where gestures are captured on the medium with ease and immediacy, sculpting presents a challenge in simplifying gestures due to technological limitations. Consequently, he crafts a significant portion of his works from wrought iron, aiming to retain the traces of their shaping process. These spontaneous, unintentional gestures occurring during sculpture-making, which allow the material to assert its influence, contribute to each work's unique and irreplicable form. Simultaneously, Nagy endeavors to explore the minimal gesture required to transform raw material into sculpture.

His sculptures are characterized by organic, geometric, gesture-based abstractions. Apart from employing classical techniques of material formation, sculpture, and plastic, Nagy is particularly interested in construction and montage techniques that gained prominence in the last century. He spontaneously invents his sculptures during the creative process, prioritizing the act of making and the interactive relationship between artist and material, whereby both mutually shape each other. Preferring spontaneous improvisation over preconceived blueprints, Nagy's sculptures predominantly emerge from his experimentation with various metals.