Small is beautiful - small objects
2010.02.02 - 03.12.
’Small is Beautiful’ was actually the title of Schumacher’s book on alternative economics. It may seem like a paradox to refer with this title to the genre of objects, since this type of art has little to do with the aesthetic category of beautiful. Back in the day, in the mid 1910s Marcel Duchamp decided to create objects from found material. His intention was to challange society’s idea of pretty, to destroy the concepts of art and aesthetics, and to reject and protest against the devaluation of art works to ’art objects’. The destiny of object as a medium has unfolded – by now it has become a canon: highly appreciated and prized works are seeked by museums and private collectors.
Object-art first appeared in Hungary in the late 1960s, and became popular along the boost of conceptual art in the '70s. Later in the 1990s, parallel to the wave of neoconceptual tendencies, object as a medium gained more interest and still today it is a favoured genre by many artists. The curator of this exhibition, Gyula Várnai also creates objects. Despite his former enormous, room-filling installations, recently he has worked on smaller objects that offer a more intimate reception.
The current exhibition, that musters different generations, does not intend to give a detailed overview on this genre, but rather it aims to introduce important aspects of object-art through various artists' points of view. Among the participating artists there are some whose most favoured medium is object-art (Péter Tamás Halász, Péter Szalay), and some who often create objects while using other diverse media as well, (Ágnes Előd, Gábor Gerhes, Gyula Július, László Karácsonyi, Zsolt Keserue, Rudolf Pacsika, or the curator himself), and some who mainly work in different genres although every now and then they create objects as well (the painter Róbert Batykó, or Zoltán Ádám, who, while continuing painting and doing graphic work, he once again returns to object-installation).
Artists: Zoltán ÁDÁM, Róbert BATYKÓ, Ágnes ELŐD, Gábor GERHES, Péter Tamás HALÁSZ, Gyula JÚLIUS, László KARÁCSONYI, Zsolt KESERUE, Rudolf PACSIKA, Péter SZALAY, Gyula VÁRNAI
Curated by Gyula VÁRNAI
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