Interview with Igor Eugen Prokop

Could you please introduce yourself and tell us how you started in the arts? and your first experience in art making?

Who we are,where we came from,where we are going? This question is come from the ancient Greek philosophy and at the same time is a title of a  painting of Gauguin as well. Important questions. The title one of my painting ask Mr.Basquiat's  angels, there are   the  best world?Where are the guardian angels for the Nature ? I’man environmentalist. Iwas born in Budapest,1953. All my educations help me to show my opinion from our eARTh .I learned biology, art, design manager, film aesthetics, philosophy. I’m a teacher. Fusing glass artist .And Artist.I was traveled the eARTh.

How would you describe yourself and your artwork?

Everything I do can be called a lifelong process of evolvement like everything at nature once evolved within a "natural order". My studies as well as my time as a teacher, but first of all my travels, have formed me. Like everyone I was created by the daily influences: my children, my friends, and all the surrounding social and personal problems. From this daily life originates my creative sense for responsibility: I feel responsible for our planet's imperfect looking future! I sensed our Planet first of all visual, and connected my impressions with my strong interest for biology and my everlasting wish to travel. The urge to discover and the urge to create met at my soul. I traveled through many countries but how many did I not visit? I learned about the elemental, wild power of our oceans, the cradle of life itself. Then I became aware of the destruction by man. I saw the dead corals, the final extinction of uncounted creatures. At the small islands of the Pacific Ocean I became witness to the destruction of everything that should have been holy to us. These wonderful old and life giving reefs that we destroyed inspired me to formulate my feelings in order to oppose the destruction. I traveled further: New Zealand, Australia, and America with its unique New York. I traveled through the old Europe that is connected with my soul and through the hot Africa with its hard but nevertheless human way of life. Indonesia with her unlimited sources of artists and wonders of nature helped me to understand our world, as did the drop of river water under my microscope - or the body of the ant, the blade of grass?all these systems and impressions go through the filter of my brain and everything flows further into my heart and my hands: the forms, the colors, and the connections. Is the blade of grass with its efficiency not superior to any machine? And what kind of wonder is the human being? 23000 breaths does he take each day, and he needs so many liters of pure water - pure water from his small habitat within our universe. You should think that this habitat would be perfect for him. We are all tiny parts within the great, unbelievable and after all not understandable system. Every detail within this system is important, both in the physic as well as in the psychic world. Errors of the system (like my diseases) let me reflect about the connections within the system. Everything is connected - nothing is meaningless. It does matter how you live, what you create, if you are going to have children, and what you are going to leave to them and their children as well. It does matter how much enlightenment you achieve! Every one of us has his own inner world made out of experience and personal learning within the system. I want to preserve the past and to design the future. I want to protect the universal systems and I would like to protect the teachings of those that have thought me everything: The Organon by Aristoteles, Holbach, "On the road" by Kerouac, Jack London, Arnold Gehlen, Stephen Hawking and several other teachers from art, music, history and even from the internet. They all became guides on my way. Our world permits no further mistakes. United mankind can solve its problems. We must work together! This is my final goal.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

The inspiration for my pictures: To create tolerant, creative and cooperative systems that are heading toward a spiritual unity. Everyone must learn and teach at his realm, everyone must learn to work together with the power of art. For it is only possible to compare the power of art to that of nature herself.

What emotions do you hope the viewers experience when looking at your art?

The joy of discovery. Thinking. Recognizing the structures of Nature. The concept of our genetic, divine origin, eternity, the myth of creation, our place in infinity and on the Earth, where we are from, what we are, where we are going to in space and in time. Our tasks, love, the energy of love, empathy, sympathy, how we should protect the Earth and Nature and what we are actually doing it all for. Our vision, universal connections, the existence of intelligent creatures, whether we are alone in the universe and God’s questions.

When do you know that an artwork is finished ?

My particular technique and style determine when the picture will be completed. The elaboration of the details, creating the multi-dimensional feeling, the individual elements, connecting the details all over the entire surface, presenting the different layers on the surface every inch of the canvas is important to achieve the visual and conceptual unity of the picture. My painting gets completed when each and every point of it is evenly elaborated and it incorporates aesthetic and conceptual harmony.

What has been the most exciting moment in your art career so far?

When my work is appreciated I always get physically and intellectually excited. Naturally, preparing for a highly reputed exhibition is a very tense state of mind full of positive energy. It starts from the selection of the pictures to the inauguration ceremony, and the opinions of my pictures, the acknowledgement, the prizes and the fact that my pictures are bought by collectors is a cathartic feeling for me.

How long does it take to produce one work?

My style incorporates extremely sophisticated work, concentration and, at the same time, it means completely free intellectual and physical integrity with the painting I am working on. Depending on the size of the canvas, and how detailed the picture is, it takes continual daily work, long hours every day for weeks, sometimes months, until I achieve the correct and professional quality required for the exhibition.

What exciting projects are you working on right now? Can you share some of the future plans for your artworks?

I have been working on a special artistic- environment protection project invented by me. Being a biologist-artist, in recent times my thoughts and emotions have been deeply determined by the global problems related to our Nature and the environment.

Depending on my possibilities, during the last two decades I have consciously travelled around the world to collect knowledge and materials regarding Nature’s problems. Besides accumulating impressions, I recorded these experiences on photos and films as well. Processing, incorporating and applying them in my artistic work is continual.

My project consists of two, technically different, but content-wise organically entwined parts. The first one is the special, fusing glass picture is my innovation and development. I paint the BGPP (Brass Glass Panel Painting) with acrylic and special, bright lacquer on a special mixture of plastic and brass panels, then I cut negative surfaces from the plate where I insert and glue pieces of melted fusing glass and the picture is illuminated with the light built into the back of the frame. The transparent colored lights and the painted surfaces procreate an organic picture. With the help of this technique I focus on the diversity and fragility of Nature.

The second part of my project is preparing a really special “book”. It consist of three volumes. The pages of the book – the surface for the painter - resulted from “heritage” necessity. Part of my father’s inheritance contained fragments of a collection of valuable old books from 1800’s. Unfortunately, these books got damaged beyond retrieve. I could not save them except for painting the experiences of my nature-environment protection trips on the usable pages. This way an artistic kaleidoscope has evoked bearing the history of our family, nation and world, it has become a sociological, social and individual book covering the history of several centuries. It elaborates the current problems of Nature and the environment in a subjective, artistic way. The pages of the book are individual pictures suitable for exhibition.

Do you have any upcoming events or exhibitions we should know about?

At present I am participating in several prestigious exhibitions, namely:  at the It’s Liquid exhibition at 57th Venice Art Biennale lasting three months. In October I will be present with my paintings at the Florence Art Biennale whose slogan is: „eARTh-Creativity & Sustainability” and then in Mantua, Italy in November this year. My pictures are shown at permanent exhibitions in Berlin and Luxembourg. Last month a temporary exhibition was opened in the Dalian International Conference Center, Dalian, China that lasts several months. Due to a multiannual contract my pictures will be exhibited in different big cities of China. On 17th November my works will participate in the award ceremony of „The Global Art Awards” in Dubai as I have been nominated. I am preparing for an individual exhibition in Paris later this year. At present my pictures can be seen in two French galleries, in Lyon and St. Etienne.  My pictures have achieved success at the Art Expo in Chianciano Terme, Italy

Where do you see your art going in five years?

With regard to the continuity of exhibitions I have been invited to more and more places to display my paintings and I find it both intellectually and financially successful/satisfying. That is why I would like to be present in the collections of more, acknowledged collectors within five years. It is my five-year plan to appear at Sotheby’s and Christie’s auctions with my works.