In focus: Young Contemporary Hungarian Artists at derkó.pécsi.2014

This year's Easter weekend was marked by a visit to Budapest's Kunsthalle contemporary art museum located in 1895 eclectic-neoclassicism building in the Heroes' square. Strolling at night after a heavy Hungarian dinner, I have noticed a big announcement of Shirin Neshat's exhibition and my visit followed the next day.  

Little I knew about the contemporary art in Hungary, so the discovery of quite a few names paid off my early Sunday morning pilgrimage. The group exhibition consisted of Derkovits Gyula Fine Arts Scholarship holders' artworks. My  favorite were István Felsmann's Lego Relief pieces and witty pieces and a witty installation of three maneki-neko sculptures playing music instruments as well as Gábor Koós's Budapest Diary large-scale prints and wooden stencils (I have been quite lucky to try to make some on my own in Autumn 2013). 

 István Felsmann, Hospital, acryl, lego, 2010

 István Felsmann, Hospital, acryl, lego, 2010. Detail

István Felsmann, D.M.Z, print, lego, 65X65, 2013

 István Felsmann, D.M.Z, print, lego, 65X65, 2013. Detail

István Felsmann, Newspaper, lego, newspaper, 34X45, 2011

István Felsmann, Newspaper, lego, newspaper, 34X45, 2011. Detail

 István Felsmann, Composition, lego, paper, 34X45, 2010

István Felsmann, Booklet, lego, booklet, 34X45, 2009

István Felsmann, Maneki-neko Playing Bass, installation, 2014

Gábor Koós's Budapest Diary series, print, 2014

 Gábor Koós's Budapest Diary series, stencil, 2014

 Gábor Koós's Budapest Diary series, print, 2014

Gábor Koós's Budapest Diary series, stencil, 2014

Works of Judit Rita Raboczky reminded me a variation of Pawel Althamer's 2011 commission for Deutsche Guggenheim, Venetians large-scale sculpture installation for 2013 Venice Biennial while the installation of Szanyi Borbàla - to another Polish artist NeSpoon whose works are based on lace patterns usually inserted into urban landscapes. However, for this associative exercise, there is a separate post.

Judit Rita Raboczky, Looking in the Mirror, 2011, achor

Judit Rita Raboczky, Looking in the Mirror, 2011, achor. Detail

Judit Rita Raboczky, 2011, achor

Pawel Althamer at Venice 2013 Biennale with a variation of his 2011 commission for Deutsche Guggenheim, Venetians large-scale sculpture installation

Szanyi Borbàla, YSA PUR III, 2013, iron

NeSpoon, Franciacorta project for Art Kitchen Foundation. Source: artist's Behance page

Click here for more photos and videos

When Lady Gaga was not even born...

...there was a Dutch duet whose creations she would definitely wear. 

Gijs Bakker and Emmy Van Leersum, "couple from the year 2000", as they were called by a journalist covering their revolutionary show opening at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum Edelsmeden 3 (Silversmith 3) back on May 12, 1967, were also partners in real life. In the first five years of their marriage they signed a number of jewelry designs with GIJS+EMMY stamps, represented by two plus signs. 

The duet placed great emphasis on the relationship between jewelry and human body and was the first to use industrial materials such as lightweight aluminum or hard, unruly stainless steel. Space theme, massive and unusual forms, choice of cheap and affordable materials are the main characteristics of their bold creations. 

Decades later, the museum decided to get back to the legendary and provocative designers by creating a temporary show (on view until August 24, 2014) inspired by 1967 exhibition.  

photos of the entry video reconstructing the 1967 show ambience

full video

Probably, these items have been inspiration for Maison Martin Margiela jewelry department

 

 ...and these for Philip Treacy's creations

"basic garments" rejecting the fashion dictates of Parisian haute couture

In 1967 show the garments were worn by designers' friends who shocked the visitors by appearing among them in these futuristic garments and later walked out in the streets of Amsterdam. One witness has claimed to see the "spacemen" while others found them quite "absurd romper suits"

Introduction…

The idea of starting an art/lifestyle blog has spurred in my mind while rambling on the streets of Zurich where Christmas was already present. Back in the city that I tend to call “home” or “base” as my frugal belongings consisting of clothes, collection of around 80 types of tea and all kind of other items are stored there while I cycle the world for work and pleasure, we had Sant'Ambroggio, the city’s patron celebration. Stopping too often at Sprungli before I ended up going to the Nahmad family private collection exhibition I discovered a remarkable piece called "Speechless Gray Horse" (2004) by the Flemish artist Berlinde de Bruyckere at the end of our tour of Kunsthaus Zurich. 

Source: dailyserving.com

Zurich air and our spontaneous cultural program was inspiring: I decided to write about that horse and even create a blog. Uber-excited I’ve started, then, I went to London, unintentionally willingly missed my flight back to Milan for a corporate Christmas party (setting a tradition to skip this celebration for the upcoming years while working for this company), bought instead a ticket through la Manche to Paris to spend time with a dear friend, got back to work… and lost the file with my horsy-notes as well as motivation to write.

So a bit more than 1,5 years later I haven’t found my original post, but an inspiration together with energy to write knocked on my hotel room.

So, who am I? Waggishly, I call myself a “contemporary nomad” as this nickname best describes from one side, my professional nomadism of a consultant for whom staying in hotel rooms is more common than in her own apartment, for whom commuting means taking at least a three-hour flight. From the other my essence cannot be split apart from my passion to art, contemporary art in particular, and attempts of making a “mobile” art while I travel for work some examples of which you can find here.

A social butterfly, for the next two weeks I am entrapped in Almaty city that one of my friends “had (to) look up <…> on the map... " and concluded that "it has to be extremely exotic”. And yes, it is, even for me. People here primarily eat horse meat and so had we during a dinner with our clients two months. My Italian manager while chewing a piece of local delicacy beshbarmak politically-correctly noted that “in Italy horses have names and we treat them as pets, they are like a part of our family”. After that dinner we all had stomach problems and strong decision of never drinking neither horse, nor camel milk even as a courtesy to the hosts.

And yesterday I unwillingly saw isles of slaughtered horse meet (probably piggy wiggy Chaim Soutin would be uber pumped to create more of his meat art after this encounter). The smell of unrefrigerated decaying meat under 30C heat incited in my mind a mental link with the dead horse from Zurich and reminded about my long-time desire to start a blog. So, here is my attempt to talk about everything I like or that surprises me. Hope, you will stay with me despite my creepy horse-association links!