Skyscrapers Shrouded in Clouds New York Series
I was born in Hungary but moved with my family to the USA, in 1988. We lived in an artist colony on the "Ettl Farm" in Princeton, New Jersey and I commuted to New York every morning. Day after day I was impressed by the New York City skyscrapers in the distance - endless columns growing bigger and bigger as I approached the City. One day I saw dark, heavy clouds weighing down on the skyscrapers. Their tops poked through the clouds like knives - I could almost feel the pressure on my skin. This experience was both frightening and gorgeous at the same time and in this duality I found the very essence of what New York City meant to me. This was an inspiration for my new sculpture series, as well as an inspiration that continues on. I carved the first wood sculpture of the series in 1988 and in 1998 I started actively carving stone sculptures that fit this idea. Selecting the right stones, the right size, and shape is crucial. Selecting the organic shape of the stone requires a lot of time and intuition, which I do after numerous sketches. I always do direct carving: "true to the stone." I do not force the organic shape beyond its own nature. Even when I carve small-sized blocks, I think in a monumental scale and strongly believe that my "small sculptures" can be enlarged to any scale and any type of stone. Their structure and their stability of composition are already solved.
My skyscrapers were never made to look realistic - they are symbolic, abstract elements. I'm searching the depths of the stone. The meditative, slow hand-carving process opens up undeveloped dimensions in art and life.
Fugitive Shadow Series
In 1995 I received an invitation to the International Woodcarving Symposium in Nagyatád, Hungary. I arrived with a concrete design and a working plan for my woodcarving project. The symposium and the sculpture park are only 15 miles from the Hungarian-Croatian border and, as we all remember, there was a terrible war raging in the former Yugoslavia at the time. We heard and saw the NATO airplanes flying overhead night and day. In one section of Nagyatád, close to the symposium where I was working, a refugee camp was built for the thousands of war victims. I witnessed many of these country-less, homeless men enter the camp every day. This shocking and horrific experience, one which I had never come so close to, caused me to change my original plan for the woodcarving project. I then started the first piece of a new series of sculptures, the Fugitive Shadow Series, a symbolic shelter for fugitive men.
Joseph Petrovics studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary where he received an MFA in Sculpture. He has received many awards including the Derkovits Prize,the Lipot Herman Award, and the Endre Domanovsky Award. Petrovics has had solo exhibitions at the Witherspoon Gallery, Princeton, NJ; the Consulate of Hungary, New York, NY; the Bush Campus Center Art Gallery, Rutgers University, Brunswick, NJ; the Ettl Gallery, Princeton, NJ; and the Godollo Gallery, Godollo, Hungary. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Bronx Museum of Art, Bronx, NY; The Academy of Fine Arts, BUdapest, Hungary; the Museum of the American Hungarian Foundation; New Brunswick, NJ; University of Maryland, Art Gallery College Park, MD; and at the International Woodcarving Symposium and exhibition in Nagyatad, Hungary. He has also produced many public commissions including the Firefighters' Memorial Wall at FDNY 10 House, New York, NY; the Iwo Jima Memorial Monument for the Iwo Jima Survivors Association of Connecticut, New Britain, CT; and a bronze relief for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Atlanta, GA, to name a few. Currently Petrovics is the Studio Director and Assistant to the Director at the Newington Cropsey Foundation Academy of Art, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.
As a sculptor Joseph Petrovics is a breed apart. He is not a "thing maker". He is instead, a storyteller of a rare sort. The characters in his stories are not filmic, they are not costumed, nor are they surrounded by portentous atmosphere they are instead elemental, classical and mythic. And the stories they tell are of the dualities that shape the action of our world. Whether one considers early work like the Fugitive Shadow series, the Skyscrapers in Clouds series (eerily pre-9/11), or the recent masterwork, the Firefighters' Memorial Wall, Petrovics speaks to grand and often opposing forces paired forever in mythic choreography.
In the Fugitive Shadow series, light is the animator while the object/sculpture is passive, suggesting containment but not demanding it. Shadows are held softly within the form. The physical sculpture reveals the content but is not the content. Here the duality portrayed is perhaps the most ancient the play between light and dark and their interchangeable natures.
Likewise, in the Skyscrapers series the dualities are clear. The vanity of man's grand and powerful vertical constructions is pitted against the ephemeral heavens. The clouds are pierced by, but also cap, diminish, and shroud the surging impulse of the towers.Either way, one impulse is tempered by another and the ensuing dance is our reward. The Colliding Towers series is structured in a doubly dual system. The pairs of towers can be seen as lovers who stand together and hence must also fall together. But the unseen opposition in this group of works is gravity itself and the inevitability of collapse. The grand gesture is returned to dust. Petrovics is working here from classical themes which transcend even the bitter, poignant and particular experience of 2001. This, I might add, is no easy task and is a testament to Petrovics' breadth and vision.
We come now to the Firefighters' Memorial Wall. A tour de force of human power engaged against both the harsh and cruel physical circumstances faced by the firefighters, and in a very real sense, against the unseen forces that brought on this nightmare. This is not simply a scene of men toiling against great odds, but is rather a portrayal of humanity struggling against itself against the darker side of our own nature. That we must engage and meet that battle is telegraphed to us by Petrovics in a masterful assembly of dozens of small gestures and actions all of which highlight the eternal nature of the struggle portrayed. The oppositional forces are hard at work but the good guys have an edge they must succeed.
We salute the work of Joseph Petrovics.
Gregory Amenoff
New York 2007
I first met Joseph Petrovics in 2003, after my law firm, Holland & Knight, committed to sponsor the Firefighters' Memorial Wall to honor the members the Fire Department of New York lost on September 11, 2001. The assignment of finding an artist to sculpt a moment frozen in time was given to me. Joseph came highly recommended, through the Memorial Wall's designer, Viggo Rambusch of Rambusch Studios, and we were soon introduced. Not much later, I stood in awe in New Britain - Newington, Connecticut viewing Joseph's Iwo Jima Memorial in bronze and granite. It spoke to me of heroes, and I knew then that Joseph Petrovics would sculpt another triumph for the world to see.
Not long after Joseph began his work on the Firefighters' Memorial Wall, I was called in to approve each step of his sculpting process. My consents came easily as the veritable scene from 9-11 began to unfold. Though this Memorial exudes the portent of loss, it speaks of humanity through masterful depictions of fearless souls committing courageous acts. President George W. Bush, upon his visit to the Memorial Wall, called the work a national memorial. And so it was that yet another national memorial by Joseph Petrovics had come to be.
The United States is blessed by Joseph Petrovics' 1988 decision to adopt our country as his own, and I am grateful for the impact that Joseph's work has had on the millions who are compelled to reflection at the Memorial Wall, at the Iwo Jima Memorial, and at his many other remarkable works located throughout the world. His approach is based on his vision, for Joseph does not take on jobs. Instead, he takes on missions that involve as much of his heart as his hands and mind. The result, each time, is a work of eternity.
I consider him not only a sculptor of national memorials, but a national treasure himself.
Brian D. Starer, Vice Chair
Holland & Knight Charitable Foundation