Page 106 - Art Review

Abstract Hungary

Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien, Graz 24 June – 9 September

The title Abstract Hungary would seem to among these the Matisse-like colour composi- and representative of a profoundly ‘unMarxist’
articulate a contradiction: it proposes to make tions of Imre Bak and the more purely geometric consciousness (although, notably, at other times
an international language local. More precisely, abstractions of Dóra Maurer. This type of formal and in other places abstraction has been Marxist
it promises art whose language, by conven- abstraction is both extended and disrupted by enough), and such exhibition opportunities
tional definition, exists without external László Lakner’s Untitled (1990) painting (and its were not offered to those artists still living
referent or context, and then frames it within more recent counterpart), which features a series in Hungary. One of the latter, János Major,
a (geographical) referent and context. In that of numbers, letters and punctuation marks protested at the opening, pulling a card with
sense, this group exhibition – featuring works arranged, against a navy-blue background, ‘Vasarely Go Home!’ written on it whenever
by 24 Hungarian artists, representing three so as to appear simultaneously like the remains a fellow artist passed. It’s a reminder that while
generations (their output roughly spanning of some heavily censored text or a carefully you certainly don’t need to know about the
the 1960s to the present day), spread across planned, yet ultimately meaningless, concrete sociopolitical context of Hungarian art to enjoy
the two floors of the Künstlerhaus, plus an poem. From there things develop in ever more the formal mutations exposed in this show,
outdoor sculpture in the adjacent park – might intriguing ways. Photographer Péter Puklus’s context can change your reading of things.
seem to offer art that is simultaneously liberated staged images of people, objects and colours – But then again, Márton Nemes’s Temporary
and constrained. in Golden Decadence (2013) a blue bicycle, held by a Images 02 (2017), a series of five variously
Or perhaps you could read the title as gold-painted nude woman against a blue curtain proportioned landscape canvases, held together
proposing that the very idea of ‘Hungary’ – seem to collapse the languages and media of by a ratchet strap, onto which are printed various
is an abstraction in itself. One look at Little artists such as Yves Klein and Marcel Duchamp abstract patterns and shapes (some of which look
Warsaw’s Armor (2016), a circular slice through into a single photographic statement. Far from like they might be derived from extrusions
the mailboxes of a Budapest apartment being a language that eschews context, abstrac- of plastics or other new materials), suggests
building, would suggest this: inasmuch as the tion today, it seems, is a language with a history. that there’s not that much holding some of
work serves to highlight the abstract nature Perhaps a key work to the show is Vienna- these abstract works together at all. Although
of names (that label each mailbox) in relation based Andreas Fogarasi’s Vasarely Go Home (2011), that strap, however temporary it looks, is clearly
to a person, and of a fragment of interior which takes the form of a video installation that a means of constraint.
architecture to a building. While the work includes archival material and a documentary Abstract Hungary, then, turns out to be many
is ostensibly a fragment of something ‘real’, video related to celebrated Hungarian Op art things: a focused history of a nation’s recent art,
it tells us little about the reality of either the artist Victor Vasarely’s 1969 retrospective at the an index of new forms (for this viewer, Zsófia
mailbox users or their dwelling. Kunsthalle Budapest – the first time abstract art Keresztes’s melting mix of painting and
The exhibition begins conventionally was shown at a Hungarian public institution. At sculpture represented something of a discovery),
enough, with works by some of Hungary’s the time of the exhibition, Vasarely had been a study of the way in which art creates its own
most celebrated (particularly in contemporary living in Paris for almost 40 years; his show histories and of the manifold directions in which
times) abstractionists of the late 1960s and took place in a context where abstract art was abstraction can go. With or without a particular
1970s (albeit here represented by recent works): frowned upon, as a sign of Western decadence context to animate it. Mark Rappolt

Abstract Hungary, 2017 (installation view). Photo: Pascal Petignat.
Courtesy Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien, Graz

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