The magic of forms and colours is an exhibition that belongs to the artist Palkó Ernő, but it also contains paintings and drawings from his late brother, Palkó Csaba.
Palkó Ernő is a ceramist with a vast experience in the field. He graduated from the Ceramics department within the Institute of Fine and Decorative Arts “Ion Andreescu” ” (today,the Art and Design University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania). According to the artist, “This subject, this art, is not talked about very often”. His art is a complex process, the making of a single piece can take from a day to a week, depending on the size. Of course, inspiration is also a very important factor in this process. For this particular exhibition, the main focus of the sculptures has been the waves. The artist claims that he finds inspiration everywhere, but for this, he was mostly inspired by the fluidity of the sea and the waves and how that can be transposed into the human figure. In this room at the museum, for this occasion, there are thirty seven pieces whose creation took around ten years.
The artist has a vast experience in the field, so we couldn’t help but wonder when he decided that this is what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. He says: “I was not born with this, it’s along way to get here. This is what I did in high school, I graduated from the Ceramics department within the Institute of Fine and Decorative Arts “Ion Andreescu”, and I continued doing it afterwards”. Palkó Ernő got to where he is now with dedication, the desire to improve and hard work. Just by taking a look at his official website,you can see a big number of individual exhibitions and International exhibitions and symposiums. He says there: “Over the recent years, my preoccupations as a ceramic artist have materialized in a series of personal exhibitions: Terra – Millenium and Grafiterra, hosted in Cluj, Bucharest,Wels (Austria) and Veszprém (Hungary); Terra Magica, hosted in Art Museum Cluj.”
Moving around the gallery, the artist talks about some of his work. This one, for example, represents an angel. The features are delicate and all, but you can’t really say if it is a man or a woman. He says, “no one really knows what gender the angels are”. This seems to be the case with most of his sculptures. There is always room for interpretation, different people see different things.
Apart from the ceramic sculptures, in the room, there are also paintings and drawings. Those are his late brother’s works. Palkó Ernő says, “My brother died in 1999 and for this exhibition I decided to make a subtle contrast between my work and his. The way the paintings and the sculptures are arranged and where they are placed, the bases they sit on and so on represents another complex process. Everything is very well thought.”
This exhibition manages to present to the public the work of two different artists, who work in two different fields, in a captivating way. At the end of this event, most of the works will go back to the studio, where Palkó Ernő is already working on his next exhibition.
