A Star Looks at the Stars – Photographs by Éva Keleti | Budapest Art Market | „You’ll Bring the Death of Me” – The Committee (Bizottság) Goes to the Palace of the Arts | The Situation – A Show by János Sugár | Small Talk
REVIEW:
Judit Gellér: A Star Looks at the Stars – Photographs by Éva Keleti
The retrospective exhibit has been set up to mark the 80th birthday of Éva Keleti, one of the most poignant exponents of recent Hungarian photography. The pieces, most of which are on public view for the first time, account not only for a photographic oeuvre but also for an entire era rich in its cultural output.
Éva Keleti has not only been awarded with many prizes and recognitions but has participated in the work of many professional associations both at home and abroad.
The bulk of the photographs made in the 60s, 70s and 80s, shown here mostly for the first time, record personalities, stars of the period spanning three decades. Stardom then, however, meant something else than it does today. “Once stars arose not just because they had been manufactured into stardom but because they had contributed something that was essential.” The photographer’s medium, too, was different being analogous rather than digital back then.
Whether Keleti reported on theatrical nights or the work going on in an artist’s studio,
her concentration and intense attention was paramount. Her favourite procedure, taking a snapshot during motion, is best seen on her piece In Mid-Air. The way she compresses a lengthy ballet performance into a single shot recording dancers in mid-air with their flipping veils captures a single moment that reproduces for the viewer not just the movement itself but also the music presumably played in an extremely tense theatrical atmosphere.
She recorded great moments of great personalities but not only moments of artistic performance or production. She was fond of portraying her protagonists as ordinary human beings. Even though she usually included their instruments or other artistic attributes, what she really wanted was to introduce the viewer to the human being behind the public personality.
Her photographs are intimate but never taken from the stance of a voyeur. Never did she work stealthily, by way of a paparazzo, but had the full co-operation of her models. She recorded the stars of the last half a century – the way only a star could do it.
Budapest Gallery – Budapest Exhibition Hall
25 August – 25 September
NEWS:
Budapest Art Market
For those not yet in the know, Budapest’s famed contemporary art fair named Art Fair has ceased to exist. Thus, while only a second rate event outshone by Art Fair last year, Budapest Art Market has by this year moved forward into the role of sole protagonist. With a lot of international fireworks promised by such items as Regional Dreams, the attendance of ex-US ambassador Nancy Brinker, international galleries, Gipsy painters, parties, and special VIP programmes, Budapest Art Market is sure to stir much international attention from 27 through 30 October in the B block of the Millenary Exhibition Park.
PREVIEW:
„You’ll Bring the Death of Me” – The Committee (Bizottság) Goes to the Palace of the Arts
3 September – 13 November
Műcsarnok
A rock group called The Committee (Bizottság), originally formed by Avant-Garde painters, was undoubtedly a prime moving force of 80s counter-culture in Hungary. The painters had come from the Szentendre Lajos Vajda Studio and adhered to Fluxus Art by virtue of their notion of “everything is art because life itself is art”. The products of their artistic endeavours, straddling as they were the domains of music and painting, were utterly contrary to the expectations of officialdom. The Palace of the Arts wishes to reconstruct all this through work produced by arch-protagonists András Wahorn, László fe Lugossy, and István ef Zámbó.
The Situation – A Show by János Sugár
2 September – 29 October
Videospace Budapest Gallery
The two-channel video installation called Kairos vs. Expeditus lies in the focus of János Sugár’s latest show. In Greek mythology Kairos was the god of opportune moments, while 4th century saint Expeditus was against procrastination, ready to advise people in emergencies. The show suggests that we mustn’t put off fulfilling our duties, i.e. we must unfailingly turn the future into our living present.
Small Talk
1 September – 25 September
Judit Virág Gallery and Auction House
Two artists (Eszter Radák and Péter Hecker) had been asked to co-operate in painting on jointly agreed titles, while another two (József Csató and Gábor Király) had been asked to paint on jointly agreed themes. While the latter two, both in their thirties, have long preferred simplicity amid a complicated environment, the former two have always started out from a reality that they have often viewed in a sarcastic vein.