Gábor Attalai created the series titled RED-Y MADE, consisting of artist stamps, objects and photographs, between 1974 and 1980. In this artwork he reflected on the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp, the father of conceptual art in Hungary. Attalai used his Red-y mades covered in red enamel paint as a signature. The all-pervasive and ubiquitous red colour also refers to the ideological uniformization taking place at the Eastern-European states occupied by the Soviet Union, and to the omnipresent red flags that symbolised the process. The act of adding red enamel paint may be viewed as a certain peculiar East-West transfer, in which the concepts of Dada, colour-field painting and minimalism are united and transcribed at the same time. The photographs taken and transformed in the interior space of Galerie Lóa, Harlem, and the artworks exhibited a year later at the same place all aim at transforming/appropriating the (exhibition) space using minimal gestures, and simultaneously altering usual interpretations through a subtle, conceptual twist.
Kriszta Dékei