I went to an apartment and found an exhibition there

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I went to an apartment and found an exhibition there
I went to an apartment and found an exhibition there
Anonim

Although the various apartment theaters are becoming more and more popular, and there are plenty of studio apartments, real apartment exhibitions are rarely held in Budapest these days. The essence of the apartment exhibition is that the artist really exhibits his works in his own apartment, which can often only be entered with a separate or hidden invitation that is available in a way known to the initiated.

Excuse me, are we in the right place?

This time, the invitation comes on the popular social media site called Tumbrl, where the artist organizing the exhibition, Zsolt Hajdu, published the seventh district location and time: Damjanich Street, 7:19 p.m. When we arrive, we stand a bit confused with the photographer colleague, when we ring the doorbell an older lady opens the door, to whom we try to explain exactly why we came. The misunderstanding quickly dissipates, it turns out that we are in the right place, just not at the right door: Zsolt Hajdu arrives and takes us into his home, which this time functions as an exhibition space.

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Come up to me, I'll show you my exhibition

In a similar way to apartment theaters popular since the 1960s, apartment exhibitions during socialism also functioned as forums for social and political resistance, since by placing a public event in a private space, the possibility of getting caught and colliding with the authorities was reduced. In Hungary, for example, one of the most important representatives of alternative, avant-garde art, György Galántai, organized apartment exhibitions. In an apartment on Liszt Ferenc Square, by the way.

The artist's apartment transformed into an exhibition hall is very friendly and very personal: it can be seen that someone really lives here, and that the works displayed on the wall are very important to him. The other guests arrive slowly, mainly friends, acquaintances, former group mates - then we already feel one of the important advantages of the apartment exhibition. We are at a house party, the participants of which are not bound by rigid social rules. They are here to be together and indulge in their common passion, fine art. Anyway, the apartment has two rooms, and as can be read on the invitation, one is currently for rent. Good neighborhood, nice house, and there is Internet.

They slapped me while I was reading a burning newspaper

We come across such and similar titles while looking at the larger water paintings pasted on the wall. The visual world is reminiscent of children's drawings in kindergarten, a sea of bright colors, stick figure figures, without any double meaning. The images, which can also be viewed on the artist's Tumbler, depict exactly what is described in the title. The characters in the pictures become the victims of an aggressive attack with a flaming newspaper in their hands, they get stuck on the cable car course in the adventure park, they can no longer go naked to the pub called Vittula, or they even smash the aforementioned György Galántai's light newspaper.

These are all image captions, just like "I peed on my overalls" (sic!). Let's take that literally. These images use devices of conscious naivety and amazement, and both work great in the space of the minimal apartment. I wonder if I dream these images or if they dream me. Maybe it's all a dream, like the police news from the other exhibited series of smaller pictures.

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Karcag criminal

However, as I learned from Zsolt Hajdu, the police news are completely real, they come from the crime section of the newspaper Karcagi Hírmondó. To make it clear why it seems fictional, we have to quote one: “On the evening of June 23, a local young man climbed a street fence and shook it while shouting incoherently. Alarmed residents informed the police. Similar to the larger pictures, these smaller illustrations literally break down the metaphorical word flowers of police news, so it can happen that they are only the size of a sheet of paper, but in action they become even more crowded works.

The woman spitting in the pub, the hooligan stealing coffee money from the kindergarten, or the drunk person crushing the oranges in the store arrive like a fairy tale in the apartment in the seventh district, whose (for now only) inhabitant probably portrays them in a much more colorful and kinder, and at the same time more edgy, way than in reality.. In the corner stands a jug cast from plaster of paris, part of a video installation. The video is not on display, but the object was modeled after a real can, which was filled with several liters of machine cola in a fast food restaurant. Takeaway, I guess.

The function of this is more to create an atmosphere, but you can't avoid it, it's a strange sight. A meeting between a naive child and a conscious artist in his own apartment, surrounded by friends and paintings. If I could draw, I would surely have immortalized the stolen title in Zsolt's style, but unfortunately I can't. So I wrote it down instead.

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