Spatial interventions and atmospheric transformations by eleven artists at the Ambassadorial residence
Carrying multiple layers of history, the word ABRACADABRA has been invoked for thousands of years to create magic. The word’s ambiguous origin leads back to magical gems and the Aramaic phrase “I will create as I speak.” At the Residency of the American Embassy, artists and curators applied ABRACADABRA to express art’s genuine ability to transfigure the mundane into magical, the ordinary into festive. To supplement one of the central arguments of the American art critic and philosopher Arthur C. Danto, it is not only art institutions and the art world that are capable of transfiguring everyday objects (or as Danto calls them: "mere real things") into artworks, but artworks are also opening up and unfolding new worlds, and by doing so, they also transform their surrounding environment into other spaces, into the scenes of art. In that spirit, the selected artists and their works intend to celebrate this ability by displaying various in-situ installations, small-scale artistic interventions, paintings, and objects reflecting on the spatial and atmospheric qualities of the ambassadorial residence. ABRACADABRA creates a sphere where the sublime merges with the banal, and the real melt into phantasmagoria. Within the interior, hierarchies, and hegemonies turn upside-down: the surveillant finds themself under surveillance, the functioning ceases to be functional again and what has been part of every day, now turns into a spectacle. Through hiding and highlighting certain elements of the domestic place, the artists claim the existence of the autonomy of art within all domains. The magic will last until one unveils it, and the trace it leaves behind will exist only in memory. ABRACADABRA represents a blooming, diverse, and unique couleur locale of the contemporary Hungarian independent art scene and gives an account of the aesthetic and thematic interests of a young generation of artists that works for an alternative world that sets no limits for imagination. (Zsolt Miklósvölgyi & Lili Rebeka Tóth)
Entering the residency’s protocol level, in the entry hall the viewer is welcomed by Mark Fridvalszki’s painting OPEN THEIR EYES which is an homage and reference to the eponymous song of the legendary prog rock band Emerson Lake & Palmer’s. In the context of the exhibition the artwork serves as a motto evoking art’s transformative power to make viewers look at the world – as well as the ambassadorial residence turned exhibition space – from a different perspective.
Gyopár Csenge Liksay’s sculptural installations at the restrooms, Reformation I-II are the reconsideration of the performance props taken place last year at Arcus Temporum Festival. The festival is organized by Pannonhalma Archabbey, Hungary’s oldest Benedictine monastery. In her works, Liksay creates tensions between physical touch, closeness, distance, sacrality, and body while reinterpreting the Biblical story of Noli me tangere (John 20:17, “Touch me not”). Aligning with the religious and cultural neutrality of the diplomatic space, the religious symbols of the original artworks were replaced by universal aesthetic and semiotic codes.
In the spatial expansion of Abracadabra, artworks are interspersed with artistic interventions, sculptural arrangements, and subtle alterations of the original interior designs. They appear in the form of visual identity signs and deconstructed home decorations, such as decadent flower arrangements, stickers and flags with the exhibition brand, and omniscient magic balls which transform the domestic space into an enchanted world.
Clashing with the representative space of symbols of power Lőrinc Borsos’ Abracadabra/A-B are concealments of historical paintings framed by wooden inlays. The work references an often recurring practice of the artist collective in which they censor famous artworks by using their trademark, the black enamel paint. Their act of concealment, which oftentimes raises the question of authorship, here opens a mystical dimension and an imaginary dialogue with the original decoration of the residency.
Using a hanging plexiglass surface against the wall, in Power must grow, if it doesn’t grow it rots 01–02 Dominika Trapp unites the organic and the inorganic motives of the hair and the claw clip. By referencing Hannah Arendt in the title, her intuitive painting methodology impersonates the hair clip as an invasive agent.
Using a hanging plexiglass surface against the wall, in Power must grow, if it doesn’t grow it rots 01–02 Dominika Trapp unites the organic and the inorganic motives of the hair and the claw clip. By referencing Hannah Arendt in the title, her intuitive painting methodology impersonates the hair clip as an invasive agent.
Bird – Remake is a light installation by Erik Mátrai referencing the sacred animal, Turul in his work. The mythological character, who showed the way for Hungarians to the new European homeland symbolizes the national identity and carries a significant role for political right-wingers in Hungary. The sacred bird comes into existence through the shadows cast by a surveillance camera hanging above. It becomes an object to contrast high-tech surveillance tools with outdated political maintenance, as well as a platform to form a critique on forged national historical narratives.
The anthropomorphized female gazes of Dominika Trapp’s subtle drawings emerging from the water mirror are not only another shivering portrait of ecofeminism but also hybrids of nature and man irreversibly merged into one. In this case, starting from the physiology of water, we arrive at its physiognomy, i.e. from the natural image of scientific knowledge to the autonomous expressions of fine art.
Liksay’s series of miniature objects titled Death will not certainly come to you guide the viewer’s gaze to the vitrine, a special place where one stores precious objects that are never-to-be-touched. In her meticulous work, Liksay marries her interest in Hungarian folklore, Christian iconography, sexuality, and gender performance with her practice in nail design.
Szinyova’s large-scale painting is dominated by a decapitated head levitating in solitary color fields characterized by a few indicative contour strokes, carefully selected pigments, and their tonal contrasts. Thus, the composition does not evoke a scarce and suffocating atmosphere of desolation. Instead, it unfolds a meditative pictorial reality of radical existential drama executed with meticulous painterly quality.
Offering a distinct visual experience, but still inviting to the sphere of the non-existent, in Sad and Sacred Chips Botond Keresztesi unites the overly simplified with the hyperreal. The painting served as tabletop intarsia plays with the double meaning of the word, chips causing cognitive dissonance in the viewer.
One may understand the enchanted reality of the domestic place when able to read the lines of Ppillovv’s Crystal Tales (Glory). However, the truth is not revealed for all, and the secret is ready to be burnt again by the flames.
The title as well as key motifs of Keresztesi’s painting evoke an unexpected turn in the ideological trajectory of American and global sneaker cultures. Patriotic New Balance’s lit on fire, destitute bare feet burned by the lava stones of social hindrance, unstoppable far-right military boots marching towards their long-fallen destiny: these are iconographic skeletons of Keresztesi’s multilayered pictorial vision.
Fridvalszki’s gouache works are abstract graphic speculations about long-vanished – or perhaps never realized – promises of utopian spaces of modernity. However, these images do not evoke a nostalgic sentiment for past futures, but they rather aim to re-open the collective imagination of our futureless zeitgeist towards brighter horizons.
Made of black granite, Péter Tamás Halász’s Infinite Power is a sculptural trompe l'oeil. Halász, whose work often includes ready-made and pop art gestures, uses the indestructible, invincible dark material in the form of a PlayStation 3, elevating a monument for a power that never ceases to exist.
In his artistic practice, Gergő Szinyova often researches the intersections and overlapping characteristics of printing techniques and various their relation to the art of painting. In his recent work Untitled (Various Good Moments) however, printing technology is not only evoked by the visual toolkit of painting but used as an image-making process on canvas to create repetitive yet unique graphic surfaces and painterly qualities.
Christa Bartesch’s charcoal drawing, Untitled hovers beyond an antique mirror, deceiving the viewer of its original function. The agitated expressions of the abstract artwork reveal the parallel reality that exists in the residential space within the exhibition.
Péter Tamás Halász’s Retro appears in the form of a memorial plaque. It represents the moment of the historic handshake of nuclear peace. A sober and earnest moment of cooperation and unity in twentieth-century human society is captured and carved into wood.
Schwarzkopf is part of a painting series called Cars, depicting various vehicles used by different public and private authorities. Using the technique of chiaroscuro, the dark background highlights the center of the image and its mysterious subject, whose identity may never be disclosed.
And the Greatest Power is Freedom is part of a Lőrinc Borsos’ series called Towering, which took the form of a rocket in its central motif, a metaphor for the human will and symbol found in various aspects of the world. It is the symbol of modern man conquering space, military equipment as well as profane architecture. These motives are collected, cut out, and reorganized in these series to raise attention to their often contradictory semiotic roles.
ABRACADABRA
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ABRACA
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LŐRINC BORSOS + ERIK MÁTRAI + GERGŐ SZINYOVA + BOTOND KERESZTESI + DOMINIKA TRAPP + GYOPÁR CSENGE LIKSAY + CHRISTA BARTESCH + PPILLOVV + MARK FRIDVALSZKI + PÉTER TAMÁS HALÁSZ
CURATED BY JÁNOS BORSOS + LILLA LŐRINC + ZSOLT MIKLÓSÖLGYI + LILI REBEKA TÓTH
PHOTOS BY KRISZTINA BILÁK + DÁVID BIRÓ
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