A Carriage Made of Marrow | The Oeuvre of Painter Károly Hopp-Halász | Desert Inn – József Tasnádi’s installation in honour of Howard Hughes | We are Grounded – A Show by Anthony Bannwart (CH)
PREVIEW:
Réka Kovács: A Carriage Made of Marrow
Performing a romantic turn, the old tramps of Dávid Juhász have found themselves in a fancy-dress ball. And they live happily ever after.
Or not?
Their tormented toes unable to fit into those fancy ball shoes, their worn sneakers look desperately out of place in the ceremonial turmoil. Their footwear belongs to quite another fight for survival; here, golden stilettos, colourful headdresses, clouds of perfume are the order of the day. On the floor, a veritable conference of fashionable boots, brand new leather, pointed noses, exciting heels, and soft straps galore. Looking half-way up, one sees braceleted male hands sticking out of pockets, brisk drink-orders, and silent games performed amid the gleeful, noisy parade.
Decadent waves of techno music embrace the cream of the city in the twilight. There are Disney princesses and local tough guys, the Grimm brothers and a few men in business suits. Also, criminals posing as university students. All around, from one counter to another, from one Szőke installation to another. The dog is cute, there is no one in the courtyard any more, the dog opens its pink mouth wide, the heat concentrates right below him but no one notices thanks to air conditioning.
A few of the more fortunate homeless characters are getting warm in puddles of light. Those without proper lighting are content with the reflections of the red heat of the Doboz nightclub, hardly expecting a kind word or a curious glance.
Except for their positions on a wall, their situation is hardly unusual. One can take the maxim of the invisibility of the homeless quite literally here. Still, their group is powerful. They brood silently above the crowd. The hard, contrasting surfaces of Juhász guide us right into the realm of human suffering. You can see an acceptance of bad fortunes glistening in their eyes as they face us frontally and show us what they are and what they have. And also what they have not. Everything that the crowd of guests beneath them has. Or has not. Glaring, worn out lives, scratched paint, a sincere presence.
Which reminds me, what if those old veterans could in fact order a drink at one of the counters? With the swift bar-mixer who pays equal attention to everyone. Maybe he’d give them a bottle of cheap wine, or security guards would give their backpacks only a gentle tap and let them on. Or they could get a light from anyone. In any case, we ought to make a huge bonfire with everyone in and around the Doboz nightclub sporting their best possible behaviour.
Still, amid all this infinite grace and kindness, I feel overpowered by dissonant emotions. Although the festival at the Café Budapest, the prince he is, has taken the entire down-and-out company by the hand turning them into the subject matter of some social life here, I am rather afraid that no one really cares for their carriage of marrow in Budapest’s Klauzál Street.
Doboz
7 October – 16 October
PREVIEW:
The Oeuvre of Painter Károly Hopp-Halász
14 October – 27 November
Pécs Galery
Károly Hopp-Halász used to be a member of the Pécs Workshop as a young painter. Since then, he has lived in Paks, but continues to be attached to his erstwhile home town. In his sizable oeuvre one can find evidence of his affinity to practically all shades of contemporary painting, e.g. geometrical composition, gesture painting, ready-mades, etc. Not counting his very early years, he has travelled his road as a lonely fighter, often running counter to fashionable vogues. He has built up his philosophical works with conscious determination, with a preference for hard and logical structures.
Desert Inn – József Tasnádi’s installation in honour of Howard Hughes
15 October – 11 November
Lajos Vajda Studio
This installation is a metaphoric reconstruction of the situation of billionaire Howard Hughes as he is stricken by the strange loneliness that we all live through when we are lonely. Streams of thought returning into themselves, an absolute timelessness, or indeed the experience of the slowing down of infinite time, a situation in which the contours of things become vague or imperceptible. Also, our possessions, our past experiences become infinitely distant and non-essential with self-expression becoming utterly senseless. Solitude is a kind of transcendental feverishness – the very frontier of the will to exist.
We are Grounded – A Show by Anthony Bannwart (CH)
14 October – 11 November
2B Gallery
We do get grounded occasionally, but we tend to learn from each failure, defeat, trauma, or accident. We tend to build a new perspective which speaks a lot about our resilience and our ability to regenerate. Bannwart (b. 1975) studied at the film and video department of the London Central St. Martin College and has been concerned with multi-layered interdisciplinary projects. He has been particularly pre-occupied with the transitory character of the Whole, and the constant change of perspectives from project to project.
