HG60 – Aesthetic Disobedience
HG60 – Aesthetic Disobedience is an exhibition based on artworks in Gábor Hunya’s private collection. This selection of the collection includes references to the most current political and cultural debates in Hungary, as well allows for a joint presentation of Hungarian and Romanian, recent and past, local and international positions.
- The opening of the exhibition is on March 29th which is at the same time00:00:15.000
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- the collector, Gabor Hunya's 60th birthday.00:00:21.500
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- He has a special significance for the show00:00:26.000
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- since the works seen here are all from his private collection.00:00:30.500
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- It's got to be remembered that this private collection is much larger,00:00:37.000
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- the number of works is about 150 to 200 pieces. We combed the collection through00:00:43.500
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- to try to put together a selection that reacts to current political events in the last 30-40 years.00:00:50.000
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- It was important amongst the selection criteria that works were to reflect00:00:56.500
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- their own current political events and not look or think back at past historical events.00:01:03.000
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- But given that, one finds works from the 70ies such as the documentation of Pinczehelyi's performance00:01:08.500
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- and also works from 2013.00:01:14.250
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- In this picture Tibor Horvath is standing, holding up a board on Heroes' Square,00:01:17.000
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- a demonstrator's board with an image of the trees from Varosliget pasted on00:01:23.500
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- and the board covers the building of the Kunsthalle as if it were not there.00:01:30.000
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- This work is documentation, a photo documentation of an action that reflects on00:01:36.500
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- the cultural policy skirmishes that the institution is presently sunken into.00:01:42.500
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- It was also a point while organizing this exhibition to try to show works made in different media00:01:49.000
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- so it was our good fortune that in recent years the collector's attention focused on public works00:01:55.500
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- thus allowing works to find their way into the show that would not suit a collector's living room,00:02:02.000
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- they wouldn't resonate so well there they are exhibition pieces.00:02:08.500
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- Here I think of this street sign by Janos Sugar that on one side says "excuse me" in Hungarian00:02:15.000
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- and "scuze" in Romanian on the other and was originally installed in Tirgu Mures.00:02:21.500
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- What is perhaps even more interesting in this context is "National Kneeling" by Janos Borsos,00:02:28.000
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- which was a private action staged in front of the House of Parliament.00:02:34.500
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- In a dress specially dedicated to this action with signs and symbols00:02:41.000
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- representing different minorities ethnic or religious groups that were00:02:46.500
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- in some way excommunicated the artist's action is a gesture toward them00:02:53.000
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- by kneeling on some of the signs while showing off others. Only to start a flame war with desultory00:03:03.500
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- racist and excommunicatory comments both for the artist and the his piece.00:03:10.000
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- The presentation today is made up by the video, the dress on a dummy, plus an info board00:03:15.500
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- explaining the signs on the dress,00:03:21.000
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- as well as another info board with a summary of comments from kuruc.info00:03:25.000
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- It has become in this form as a result of a dialogue between the collector and the artist.00:03:28.500
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- I am an economist and I was busy with the economical and the political events00:03:35.250
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- of the era of the system change. And I came to realize that I couldn't formulate well00:03:42.500
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- what was happening than,00:03:50.000
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- that the societal changes are more complex than could be described by a dry economical analysis.00:03:53.500
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- And then I started to follow what artists were doing, how they reacted, if they reacted at all.00:03:59.500
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- Contemporary art, art reflecting contemporary politics is getting made everyday, we live in it,00:04:06.000
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- so I think one cannot wait till that gets into an exhibition or a gallery,00:04:12.500
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- so I've got to be up to date in communicating with the artists.00:04:18.000