Interdependent Spaces – Ernst Itself is the Message | Fernando Botero’s Exhibition | Ropsodies Félicien Rops Master of Belgian Symbolism | Rembrandt’s Graphic Sheets | Objective Inflection – Subjective Ethnography | Design Fair | Design For a Livable Future
REVIEW:
Sarolta Réka Entz: Interdependent Spaces – Ernst Itself is the Message
The exhibit put on in Ernst Museum can be approached from two angles. On the one hand, there is the Museum itself with its local characteristics. On the other, there are the latest international trends as they exist in the best practices of the exhibiting trade. For a springboard, then, there is Ernst Museum with its local characteristics and history visualised in some of the works exhibited, e.g. architect Ferenc Dávid’s reconstruction of Ernst’s erstwhile layout, the series of photographs taken by Gabriella Csoszó, or the five interviews played out at the venue presenting the thoughts and knowledge various people have about the Museum.
The four films played out at the venue, however, belong to another category, i.e. they are reflections of the latest international trends in exhibition. Each deals with a venue or a piece of built environment in its own way and by its own means. All four explore architecture as a synthesis of history and memory. All four explore the past as it becomes the object of an epic venture. The Romanian artist-couple, Mona Vătămanu and Florin Tudor, using piles and ropes in a performance, reconstruct in their film the ertswhile layout of a 18th century Bucharest Orthodox monastery bulldozed by Ceauşescu in 1981. The film by Andreas Fogarasi, using free-verse in its voice-over, depicts the Oslo skanzen named Folkemuseum in order to question the reality of museums recording long-past realities.
The two works dealing with the present reality of the Ernst Museum are Adrien Tirtiaux’s space installation named Take this Walk, and the „intervention/deflection” of the Space Deflection Work Group named High on Art.
Tirtiaux’s installation allows us to walk through the Museum’s rooms on a „sidewalk” designed by him while taking up the artist’s novel perspectives. Thus, a kind of „movie” is being born during each walk, the most interesting sections of which are surely the kitchen and the room overlooking the street where the lovely stained-glass windows become a source of pleasure by themselves.
High on Art, a project of the Space Deflection Work Group deals with the relationship of inside and outside, the humdrum space of the street and the „sacrificial” space of the exhibition. Passers-by are allowed in free of charge through an alternative entrance operated in one of the second-floor windows. They are asked to climb a wall in crash-helmets before they are let in. Surely, after the experience of climbing, they are bound to view the exhibition with different eyes, and the designers hope that a special „flow” (Mihály Csikszentmihályi’s famous term) will be experienced in each case.
The entire project aims to reflect upon the relationship of exhibitions and their visitors, levelling some criticism both at boring exhibitions and boring visitors.
Ernst Museum
15 September – 24 October
PREVIEWS:
Fernando Botero’s Exhibition
30 September – 2 January, 2011
Museum of Fine Arts
Some sixty, mostly large oil paintings and sculptures will be presented at the exhibition, allowing an insight into a unique world that can be described by a kind of striving for monumentality and timelessness rooted in the ancient Greco-Latin tradition, while demonstrating how the artist draws inspiration and pays tribute to the classical European masters and invites visitors to the land of Latin America throbbing with life and colour. Botero’s paraphrases encourage the viewer to look for and study these precedents. An important aspect of the development of the artist’s painting style is that he earned his degree not at the academy of fine arts in Bogota, the second most important such institution in Latin America, established by the Mexican Felipe Santiago Gutiérrez, but in Madrid, where he had more opportunity to study works by European masters and make copies of them.
For more in English, and images: http://www.szepmuveszeti.hu/web/guest/articleview?mi_article_id=732
Ropsodies Hongroises – Félicien Rops Master of Belgian Symbolism
1 October – 9 January, 2011
Hungarian National Gallery
Félicien Rops (1833-1898), a friend of Baudelaire and virtuoso Hungarian draughtsman Mihály Zichy, was one of the greatest exponents of Symbolist graphic art. The exhibition of the Hungarian National Gallery is the first retrospective in Hungary of this peculiar representative of Belgian Symbolism. The works on display have been selected from the collection of the Musée Provincial Félicien Rops, Namur, and from private collections in an effort to give a comprehensive picture of this brilliant, eccentric and autonomous artist who summed up his life and art in a meaningful motto also serving as a response to his critics: „I am Rops, and I have never wanted to be otherwise.”
For more in English: http://www.mng.hu/en/exhibitions/rops_nyito_en
Rembrandt’s Graphic Sheets
1 October – 31 October
Regional All the Arts Centre (REÖK), Szeged
Starting from the early works of the great Dutch artist right on to the ones created in his later periods, a great many interesting works are presented. The show represents the versatility of his choice of subject matter, too, since visitors can admire self-portraits, Biblical stories, genre-pictures, studies of heads as well as drawings of beggars and rabbis…
Objective Inflection – Subjective Ethnography (Design Week Budapest 2010)
1 October – 10 October
Museum of Ethnography
The exhibition is a creation based on objects and words. A wider context of handmade everyday objects and their use is presented in relation to folk and popular culture as well as handicraft and industrial design. Objects, design and manufacturing as a creative form of production, their differing folk and popular versions appear based on pieces from the collection of the Museum of Ethnography combined with the exhibition and interpretation of “guest” objects.
Design Fair (Design Week Budapest 2010)
1 October – 17 October
Terrace Gallery, Gödör Club
Design Terminal”s satellite exhibition focuses on Hungarian design ideas that are ready for production, wait for a manufacturer and are very likely to become business successes. Fresh diploma works, student assignments, competition materials and plans never made public can all be found in the selection, among them an asthma inhalation equipment developed for sports, a lamp awarded at respected international professional competitions that was inspired by the solar eclipse, futuristic lounge furniture and several other exciting objects. Hopefully, the exhibited models and prototypes will appeal to the wider public as well as to decision-makers of the business world and Hungarian companies.
Design For a Livable Future (Design Week Budapest 2010)
1 October – 31 October
Design Terminal
The aim of the exhibition is to show the role of design in environment-conscious thinking focusing on solutions advancing sustainable development. The selection gives an overview of everyday objects and buildings inspired by responsible thinking. Among the creations made with the use of alternative materials and brand-new technologies, we can find a mobile wind generator, a plane using solar energy and compostable diapers alike. In addition to international novelties, visitors can also get to know works from Hungarian designers.