András Balla and his Dynamic Stability | TECHNICA SCHWEIZ / Gergely László: Jad Hanna – Collective Man | Heart Art in Budapest – Japanese Art: Part 2. | A Show Marking 100 Years of Graphic Design Education in Hungary | PhotoMania – A Show by Contemporary Photographers
REVIEW:
Judit Gellér: András Balla and his Dynamic Stability
Minute formations owe their existence to accidentality; processes that seem insignificant are sharpened by fixation and blowing-up. Having been long active as a gardening engineer, photographic artist András Balla produces photograms and specially enhanced light-drawings that capture dynamic, constantly changing processes by making them static.
All cultures attribute symbolic meanings to human hair. It is an indispensible asset of superstitious rituals; a single hair stolen from a desired person can lead to his/her infatuation with the thief; possessing the hair of an enemy can provide you with supernatural powers; cutting someone else’s hair can deprive him/her of his/her power. On Balla’s large-sized „hair photograms” the dark, curly tufts of hair possess a symbolic power in themselves; their texture recalls reeds blown by the wind on the lakeshore in twilight; at other times the tufts suggest strange marine creatures, mystic figures and forms.
Balla is enormously attracted to gardens, plants, Nature, i.e. the spectacles that induce us to contemplation and meditation. We are all familiar with our sudden discovery of some giant in the clouds billowing above us, or our discovery of a nose, an eye, a face in a tree’s bark. Balla revels in the patterns hidden in minute forms and reveals them by blowing them up. Dispensing with the „archaic” technology of the camera, he is fully capable of enhancing the mysterious contours of light-sensitive material and black and white silhouettes. His other major theme, i.e. re-using film cartridges, also retrieves previous dynamism with its minute cracks and scratches building up over time.
The slight movements captured in his photograms are presented without their original sequences, yet, even in their present static condition, they tend to suggest an important statement on the complicated texture of the passage of time, on a constantly emerging heritage left by Time on descendants.
Budapest Gallery
28 October – 28 November
PREVIEWS:
TECHNICA SCHWEIZ / Gergely László: Jad Hanna – Collective Man
5 November – 31 December
Ernst Museum
Perhaps the best-known Communist kibbutz in Israel was founded in 1967 by young Hungarian Holocaust-survivors and named after Hanna Szenes, a Hungarian-Jewish martyr of WWII. The sister and husband of the artist’s grandmother was also among the founders. Over the last 15 years, Gergely László has visited the kibbutz many times witnessing the transformations of an „ideal”
community life. He now presents the results of his laborious efforts aimed at collecting and documenting markers of the community spirit of the kibbutz.
Heart Art in Budapest – Japanese Art: Part 2.
5 November – 16 November
Budapest Historical Museum
Both parts of the exhibition reveal the powerful influence of Western art even in the traditional genres of contemporary Japanese art but there is an equally poweful presence of largely unchanging Far-Eastern and Japanese traditions. The exhibition attempts to present the full variety of contemporary Japanese art including black ink paintings, calligraphies, and designer objects.
grafika_100 – A Show Marking 100 Years of Graphic Design Education in Hungary
4 November – 27 November
Ponton Gallery – Moholy-Nagy Art University
Along with a pictorial history of the past hundred years of graphic design education, selected computer-designed works are also on view. All works have been produced by students and their teachers whether made for graduation or competitions. The immense variety of graphic design is amply demonstrated by classic design, typography, pictorial communication, posters, interactive surfaces, 3D objects, urban spaces, toy designs, science illustrations, etc.
PhotoMania – A Show by Contemporary Photographers
3 November – 15 Január
Zsófi Faur – Ráday Gallery
All through November, to complement the Paris-Photo exhibition, and in view of international and domestic interest, the gallery has put on a show of the works of its photographers. The list is long since one of the primary aims of the show has been to render a comprehensive summary of as many trends and representatives of contemporary Hungarian photography as possible.