The exhibition explores the internal logic of the configuration of forms in contemporary artworks, with a selection of materials from the collection of the Central Bank of Hungary (Magyar Nemzeti Bank, MNB). The focus is on the analysis of the different methods of visual construction, highlighting the two distinctive methods among young Hungarian artists. Instinctive configuration of forms and digital layering. Organic visions from within and machine logic from drawing software. The exhibition of the works by young Hungarian artists analyses the dual nature of current processes in visual construction, juxtaposing gut feeling and software grammar.

GUT FEELING

One of the fundamental aspirations of 20th-century modernism broke with Aristotelian mimesis and the centuries-old tradition of portraying reality to realise the inner creation of form that emanates from the artistic psyche. This was also represented by the surrealists and the exponents of concrete art. By a divine gesture – ex nihilo – the creator creates the forms that spring from themselves. As Hans Arp remarked about his early abstract works: “These works are realities pure and independent with no meaning or cerebral intention”. Following the era of post-conceptualism, the modernist tradition of forms from within has reignited in the contemporary art production of the last decade. Artists create surrealistic forms that are difficult to capture in words, or work along analogies relating to nature. Imaging fell outside the realm of rationality, became filled with instinct and spontaneity. Artists ignore the hi-tech logic of contemporary digitality and return to the free fields of the archaic forms of existence. They create separate realms of practices that are familiar even if unknown.

József Csató creates sprawling biomorphic creatures from amoebas in his semi-abstract canvases – reminiscent of Arp’s work, Nikolett Balázs crafts feminine fantasy installations from materials found in backyards, Ádám Dóra rewrites the basic units of the urban landscape in a light-hearted way making them casual gestures of patches, Gáspár Szőke unleashes carpet patterns painted on new wave zigzags from his imagination, and Csaba Kis Róka floats bizarre organic aliens in the weightless realm of zebra-print space-time. At the same time, Erika Fábián – escaping from the psychological pressure – dots her majestic paintings with pastel body colours with a monomaniac obsession, while Slovak-born Rita Koszorús evokes Kurt Schwitters’ spontaneous Dadaist collage on her abstract surfaces, Mexican-American-born Anthony Vasquez relies on the barbaric spontaneity of the saw machine, while Dániel Bernáth, retreating into forest solitude, stretches his monochrome moulded canvas panels on stretcher bars cut along the grain. These nine young Hungarian artists represent the nine possible paths of creative processes that feed on instinct. Their approach is a contemporary reinterpretation of mid-20th century modernity, drawing from the archaic.

SOFTWARE GRAMMAR

Alessandro Baricco, in his 2018 book titled The Game, suggested that the “human-push-button-screen” trio invented by gamers created a new civilisation of digital DNA. Just as the foosball table at Baricco was replaced by video games, digital drawing software took the place of model drawing and shape building in the studios. Since the Renaissance, visual art has traditionally been based on the duality of structure and mass. This duality is repeated everywhere. The compositional sketch included a matrix of paint that arranged the pigment mass into brushstrokes, as the skeleton discovered in secret autopsies included the corporeality of muscles and tissues, and the perspective abstract line-network the three-dimensionality that became space. But digital image files projected onto the plane of a screen brought a new perspective. Drawing software – since Photoshop 3.0 in 1994 – breaks down the scene to be edited into layers, and the artist edits the layers one by one and then compresses them. With Generation Y young artists becoming skilled in the use of graphics software, this common practice is also reflected in their paintings. Artists design their works using a computer, usually by transferring the layers onto the surface of the image using the stencils of a plotter. Their method of creation, directly or involuntarily, is permeated by a preconceived, mechanistic, layering logic, eclipsing the privileged role of the hand and the psyche.

Róbert Batykó uses his own self-designed painting machine to scrape – and duplicate in a ghost image – the computer-designed paint mass on canvas, Márton Nemes builds his vibrantly techno visual world from industrially manufactured elements and spontaneous gesture splashes, and Gergő Szinyova imitates the worn patterns of old poster prints on his semi-abstract, brightly coloured, cool canvases. The sculptor Menyhért Szabó skins the classic human face, distorting universal portraits as falling masks, while Zsuzsanna Kóródi fills pixels and arranges them in subfolders in her prismatic glass reliefs, Judit Horváth Lóczi pays homage to the Hungarian forerunner of computer art, Vera Molnár, and György Gáspár reinterprets the flat-glass tradition of Hungarian glass art with his translucent, structural drawings. Meanwhile, István Felsmann creates his pseudo-constructive form language from Lego bricks that were sawed and painted, Martin Góth transfers the aesthetics of old video games to the fun mesh of square grids, and Ádám Varga – transforming himself into a painting robot – draws all the possible colour bands of the CMYK code system underneath each other, Márk Fridvalszki mixes found Mid-Century motifs into retro-futuristic album covers in his acrylic-transfer-printed paintings, and Tamás Melkovics creates an open system of plastic network theory with his sculptures designed with 3D software, promising variability and expandability. These twelve artists show the various forms of a new aesthetic modernity based on layers in the young generation of Hungarian art. They represent the possible directions of software grammar alongside the intuitive world.

by Gábor Rieder

PARTICIPANT ARTISTS:

Róbert Batykó, Dániel Bernáth, József Csató, Ádám Dóra, Erika Fábián, István Felsmann, Márk Fridvalszki, György Gáspár, Martin Góth, Csaba Kis Róka, Zsuzsanna Kóródi, Rita Koszorús, Judit Horváth Lóczi, Tamás Melkovics, Márton Nemes, Nikolett Balázs, Menyhért Szabó, Gergő Szinyova, Gáspár Szőke, Ádám Varga, Anthony Vasquez

CURATOR

Gábor Rieder

The exhibition was organized by MNB Arts and Culture, a department that deals with the curatorial tasks connected to the organization and dissemination of the collection, which is owned by the Central Bank of Hungary’s subsidiary institution MNB-Ingatlan Kft.

MNB-INGATLAN KFT.

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

Péter Bozó

HEAD OF MNB ARTS AND CULTURE

Kinga Hamvai

HEAD OF OPERATIONS AT MNB ARTS AND CULTURE

Anita Hegyi

MNB ARTS AND CULTURE

Nóra Bácskai, Dóra Egressy, Lilla Nagyházi, Gabriella Simon-Csinos, Kata Veisz-Bukor