Hajnalka Tarr mostly creates her works from ready-made, everyday objects, thus trying to process and understand the multitude of things that exist in the world. For her 2011 solo exhibition “According to Taste”, she created her own version of eleven classic paintings (Leonardo: Mona Lisa, Raphael: Madonna of the Goldfinch, Brueghel: The Tower of Babel, Ingres: The Great Odalisque, etc.), constructed from puzzle pieces. This work, based on Botticelli’s painting, is the same size as the original (172x278 cm), like the others, so it is a huge panel. She therefore bought as many boxes of the much smaller reproduction as she could find to cover the size. The Birth of Venus consists of roughly 24,000 puzzles, which the artist has arranged according to her own “taste”, creating abstract shapes, swirls and waves from the many small elements, in contrast to the original intention. The pieces of the puzzle, superimposed at the edges and thus protruding into the space, were fixed to the base of the composition with staples, adding a new pattern to the composition. The resulting work contains elements of the original image, but it is a new kind of abstract system that the artist has invested a great deal of time, attention and concentration in creating. The almost manic, monotonous, repetitive, slow working method is typical of several artists (Emese Benczúr, Mariann Imre, Kamilla Szíj, Henrietta Szira) with whom Hajnalka Tarr often exhibits. For Hajnalka Tarr, the routine, repetitive, small gestures slow down and tame the outside world, which she is able to observe and control according to her own laws, her own inner time.
Krisztina Szipőcs