Reduced to the Essentials
Interview with Silvia Bächli
Bence Kala
A jumble of too many ideas on one sheet is also thrown away — it lacks clarity. And sheets that know too much are thrown away. Good drawings are plain, simple, and reduced to the essentials; they have breadth.
Machine, Mind, Plasticity
Interthinking – An Exhibition of the Kate Vass Galerie at the Budapest Art Factory
Rita Kéri
The organizing motive of Interthinking is not critical reflection, but homage: paying tribute to Hungarian artist giants who used pioneering technological solutions in the last century, and demonstrating their impact through works that use contemporary generative tools and artificial intelligence.
Velvet Dreams
Botond Keresztesi's Solo Show
Péter Bencze
These ethereal compositions offer profound insights into the cosmic tapestry, guiding viewers on a transcendent odyssey from the earthly realm to alien-inhabited spheres. At the heart of Keresztesi’s narrative lies the seamless integration of contemporary motifs with echoes of art history.
Undermining the Music of the Spheres
An Interview with Robert Roest
Patrick Tayler
„To avoid everything happening at once in an all-encompassing, divine blend of dark, immaterial mud and half- or non-sensible, primal chaos over which fleeting, elusive spirits float, I have to fracture and light up a safety match —called lucifer in Dutch— and do one thing at a time!” – Robert Roest
L👁👁KING THROUGH PROFANE GEMSTONES
A quick chat w/ Bel Fullana
Patrick Tayler
“MIAU!” “♥♥♥!” “FUCK OFF!” “VROOOM!” “⟡ ⟡ ⟡!” “XXX!”
Scanning the Unknown
An Interview with Róbert Batykó
Patrick Tayler
Batykó carefully calibrates the extent to which he unleashes his painterly toolkit, level and mode of articulation. In the following interview, we discussed this exact vein of visual engineering. We touched upon the artist’s latest exhibitions, current preoccupations and how the last one-and-a-half decade has informed his cutting-edge experiments.
Widescreen Extravaganza
Ákos Ezer: "At least we had fun today..."
Patrick Tayler
In these monumental, museum-scale compositions, Ákos Ezer switches into berserk mode. The “director’s cut” provides additional side narratives, extras, and goodies. It is rewarding to invest the extra “leg work” into exploring these two- or three-piece mega constructions.
Aerosol Windows of the Soul
An interview with Jon Burgerman
Patrick Tayler
Jon Burgerman’s mesmerising stand-alone figures and choirlike paintings are magnetically endearing but also confrontational. Their intense features pulsate ferociously, finding ways to get imprinted behind your eyelids. His work dissolves categories, oscillating between genres and functions, creating new audiences, viewers and fandoms. To learn about the complexity of the issues at hand, I talked with the multifaceted artist who is also one of the exhibitors of the thematic group show titled The Cuteness Factor.
The Journey
János Fajó and the Pesti Workshop
The touring exhibition titled The Journey – János Fajó and the Pesti Workshop will be launched in several Chinese venues in cooperation with MNB Arts and Culture, the cultural branch of the Central Bank of Hungary (Magyar Nemzeti Bank, MNB) and the Fajó Foundation. The first exhibition will open in Shanghai’s Liu Haisu Art Museum on 19 August 2023.
Temporality in Cross-Section
Liquid Slices of Time — Female Artists from the MNB Contemporary Collection
Alex Kovács
The House of Arts in Veszprém —taking advantage of the attention directed towards the city due to the European Capital of Culture programme— is devoting several of its current exhibitions to art created by women. Among these, the first joint exhibition of the House of Arts and MNB Arts and Culture —the organisation managing the collection of the Central Bank of Hungary— entitled Liquid Slices of Time is a unique arrangement curated by Kinga Hamvai, head of MNB’s division dealing with the institution’s contemporary collection.
Domain
An interview with Dániel Erdély, Maria Lavman Vető and János Vető
Noémi Forián Szabó
The exhibition Domain#2 by Dániel Erdély, Mária Vető Lavman and János Vető was on view at the ffrindiau gallery in Budapest between the 10th and the 21st of November 2022. The material for the exhibition came from Sweden, where it was shown in 2021 at the Rostrum Gallery in Malmo under the title Domain.
Unfolding a Collection
An interview with Kinga Hamvai, Sungah Serena Choo and Zsolt Petrányi
Patrick Tayler
When an expanding collection wants to preserve its momentum, it cannot stay within the confines of the local art scene for long. Instead, it has to be activated and re-investigated in various new contexts, generating several alternative interpretations that further inform the collection’s pieces. MNB Arts and Culture has shifted its attention, thus, to re-imagining the perspectives of Hungarian art on an international scale.