Even though many still complain about the flood of digital images and advertisements, the power of the once omnipotent Pictures Generation is declining, together with the period’s typical approach towards art. This is a schizophrenic floating in the 'sea of images': 'the media culture of movies and television, popular music, and magazines' as Douglas Eklund, curator of the famous 'The Pictures Generation, 1974—1984' exhibition (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009) puts it. The 2009 exhibition was the first formal labeling of a group of artists exhibited together based on their appropriation of images from a consumerist and media saturated age. Contrary to them, artistic activity of the young, mid-80s-born artists displayed in ART+TEXT BUDAPEST, is mainly based on online research, and they tend to think in the fashion of networks, not in single media pictures.

 

In the age of the Internet, there is no beginning or end of any kind of images, the mind has only a fluid, infinite vision of images connected to each other. New picture phenomenon has emerged replacing media pictures generated by consumerism. As this new weird episteme suggests, image is just an arbitrary section plane of a whirling, interconnected information stack—a phantom on any segment cut off from the constantly pulsing Big Data. Artist practices based on this new experiment could be described as paradoxical iconoclasms, since pictures are manufactured as artworks (for sell), while their existences are denied, or at least accompanied by a commentary about the non-existence of the Image. The dys- prefix in the title—distorting the original term ‘Pictures Generation’—refers to the pathological disintegration of the autonomous picture.

 

Meanwhile new artificial raw materials (polyurethane, silicone, 3D print, carbon fiber etc.) and/or hi-tech gadgets coming from various industries also play important role in these artworks. Usage of mixed media underlines the fact that online activity changed our life, the way we think and live, but it did not pull the rug out from under our feet. Forerunner French philosophers—Barthes, Foucault, etc.—contextualized the picture and the identity of the author, underlining the rule of the viewer/reader, clearing the way for the era of the Pictures Generation. Post-Internet Art and experience have dethroned the omnipotent viewer, focusing on the interpersonal or multi-personal data sets, generating ephemeral pictures in every second, focusing on artworks reflecting to this new experiment. 

 

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ART+TEXT BUDAPEST is situated in the famous Bedő House, a gem of Hungarian Art Nouveau architecture. The Renaissance and Baroque Halls on the first floor were once home of the unique private collection of the Bedő family: Italian Madonna reliefs, Baroque and Rococo portraits, modern Hungarian paintings, applied art works, etc. were displayed here. The four young artists of 'The Dys-Picture Generation' fill the classical space with cutting edge contemporary art works, challenging the aurae of the once stored collections and the preserved interiors. Through questioning the position of artworks, recent exhibitions also revealed a paradigm shift of installing and contextualizing fine art during the past few centuries. Each of the four exhibitors has different approaches to highlight the distances between past and present.

by Gábor Rieder

 

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Gergő Szinyova (b. 1986) is recognized as one of the most emerging young abstract painters in Hungary. He had a solo show at LISTE (Basel) in 2014 (represented by Kisterem Gallery) and spent artist residencies at Stefan Simchowitz (LA) and at Carl Kostyal (Stockholm). 

—With his brand new paintings and found objects he is questioning different positions of hanging pictures in the classical era, in the late modernism, and today. Small ironic gestures are made to give honor or to criticize the relevance of abstract modernism which has never been seen in the Bedő Collection before.

 

Zsófia Keresztes (b. 1985) is known as the creator of various bizarre fragile objects, hanging textile statues, and paper bodies.

—Her new site specific installation contains several mixed media parts: silicone web, polyurethane foam poodle, plastic curtain, etc. All parts of the series set up a multi layered allegory, referring to the historical atmosphere of the Bedő House, and the elegance of the bygone richness, and obsessive art passion. 

 

Adrian Kiss (b. 1990) studied in London, and he is one of the newest talents of the Hungarian art scene. His last show was held in Trafó Gallery, Budapest’s famous independent art space.

—In ART+TEXT BUDAPEST the Transylvania-born young artist exhibits his large-scaled installations, among them 'Sylvania', made of wood veneers, light tubes, and concrete profiles. The diptych-like and triptych-like works echo the Italian altars of the Renaissance Salon, while the socialist modernist furniture elements and automotive shapes are challenging the classical interior by ruining the pure Renaissance proportions.

 

Ádám Ulbert (b. 1984), based in Amsterdam, is recognized as an emerging representative of the so-called Post-Internet Art in Budapest. He exhibited at Art Rotterdam and Art Bruxelles in 2015. His rhizomatic art approach combines elements of installations, digital footages, paintings, anthropology, art theory, alchemy, folklore, etc.

—The works exhibited in ART+TEXT BUDAPEST—digital video, installations, and drawings covered by polyurethane rubber—are from the ongoing series entitled 'Beautiful Perfume', based on the story of an androgyne-like indigenous male, who appeared in Paul Gauguin’s 'Noa Noa'. The invoked pre-modern desire for Eden meets today’s hi-tech gadgets and materials in Ulbert’s work, creating an unpredictable, dyspictured dissonance with the interiors of the Bedő House.