[artinfo] Branches | Nature art – variations | Jeno Szervátiusz and Tibor Szervátiusz | Ázbej & Ázbej

[Csoka Edina]

Upcoming exhibitions in Mucsarnok

 

Branches | Nature art – variations: Small Gestures | Nature Alliance | Eco-avantgarde | 27. 06. 2016– 16. 10. 2016 

 

Branches | Jeno Szervátiusz and Tibor Szervátiusz  | Two sculptors, two generations | 27. 06. 2016– 16. 10. 2016 

 

Branches | Ázbej & Ázbej  | Algiers – Budapest – Paris 27. 06. 2016– 11. 09. 2016

 

 

 

BRANCHES – Nature Art - Variations

Opening: 26 July, 5.30 p.m.

Kunsthalle 27 July – 16 October 2016

Nature, art, cultures, people – the world –  and its  forgotten unity 

 

Contemporary nature art works from all corners of the world. Inspired and defined by nature, by life on and in earth, as well as by the continual and reciprocal relationship between man and his environment. This thought-provoking relationship is placed at the centre of the exhibition.

 

The borderlines in art history are at times bound to be vague. As culture was perceived to have come into its own, the ancient phenomenon of nature art (see Stonehenge) was defined as one of the main branches of the fine arts, associated with body and environmental art – genres in which the mediums carry art itself – while retaining openness to other ideas. Our most ordinary signs, such as a spiral or a hexagon, are forms borrowed from nature in the broadest meaning of the word.

 

Is isolation that has dominated art for centuries and is only lifted when artists go out into nature – the last time in the middle of the 20th century – the result of our scientific concepts? And is it actually art that does not incorporate the whole world and all its contexts?

 

Nature is enriched by nature art only temporarily (no need to fear ‘overpopulation’). The works are transient with old ones disappearing, albeit with new ones continuously replacing them. So will embracing nature engender a trust of life in us enabling us to accept transience and the infinity inherent in it? Will regarding the universality of nature make us able to repeat ‘supplications’ or the act of adorning a riverbank? Forgotten rites, the humanities, and the wide range of sciences studying nature and practicing its archaeology suggest we can since nature does it too.

 

Artists from England, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, the USA, Germany, Belgium, Finland, Japan, Iran, Iceland, Poland, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Croatia, Spain, New Zealand and Indonesia will exhibit their works at our show, many of them making them here in Budapest. The works arriving from Hungarian, neighbouring and distant locations differ in their geological and regional characteristics at best weaving together the human and the natural through their understanding and complementing of changing nature, inserting them into the tissue of culture. The exhibition is divided into several chapters. “Small Gestures” presents important works by international and Hungarian contemporary nature art, while “Alliance with Nature” reviews the events that led up to nature art in Hungary, and “Ecoavantgarde” is an inspiring Iranian section exploring the relationship between art and the living environment today. Many of our guests are acclaimed worldwide, including Bob Verschueren from Belgium and Nils-Udo from Germany, whose nature art works, now referred to as classics, are familiar to Hungarian audiences from previous exhibitions.

 

Works installed outside the walls of the Kunsthalle but forming an integral part of the exhibition include nature art works to be seen in the garden of the Gödöllő Applied Arts Workshop, and Alois Lindenbauer’s Growing Boat in the park of the Nádasdy Palace in Nádasdladány.

 

The curators of the exhibition are John K. Grande (Canada-Romania), Katalin Keserü and Mahmoud Maktabi (Iran).

 

Our exhibition and the accompanying high standard catalogue with writings by several authors are devoted to the unity of nature, art, culture and the world – a unity so easily forgotten today.

 

„The art, the theory and the politics of the ecological crisis, emerging from 1968, reflects a spiritual revolution. It is not the state of the natural world which turned suddenly critical as the collapse of the biosphere has been steadily under way for a long time. What we are experiencing today is the unrolling of a new mentality. If the world is to change in the future, we need to be able to imagine how to reshape it. This is what I perceive to be the predominant role of art in general, and of eco-aesthetics in particular.”

András Lányi, writer 

 

 

 

BRANCHES - Jenő Szervátiusz and Tibor Szervátiusz - Two sculptors, two generations

Opening: 26 July, 5 p.m.

Kunsthalle 27 July – 16 October 2016

 

The exhibition displays the oeuvre of two sculptors: father and son. Almost 130 sculptures will be shown form the Cluj-born Jenő Szervátiusz and Tibor Szervátiusz in the representative sculpture-hall and adjacent rooms of the Műcsarnok to visitors. 

 

The art of Jenő Szervátiusz, who died in 1983, was focused on the region of his birthplace and exuded his love of Hungarian culture. His calling and commitment to the fate and future of the Hungarian people is shared by his son.

 

The summer exhibit of the Műcsarnok will display the sculptures of Jenő Szervátiusz from the collection of the Art Museum of Cluj, as well as the monumental works of Tibor Szervátiusz. His masterwork, the Dózsa sculpture, entitled On fiery throne, from the collection of the Hungarian National Gallery and the rarely exhibited, huge, more the 4 meter high Christ of Kolozsvár will also be included. More than 80 works will arrive from the workshop of Tibor Szervátiusz: a gigantic andesite portrait of the poet Endre Ady and a bronze portrait of the writer and public figure Dezső Szabó. A number of works representing the national poet Sándor Petőfi will be exhibited, e.g. alongside the ones arriving from his workshop, a sculpture entitled Ispánkút from the collection of the Petőfi Literary Museum. The roundrock portrait of the writer Zsigmond Móricz from the National Gallery and its sandstone pair, the Napisten lánya (The daugher of the Sun God) will be displayed. The large masterworks will be accompanied by the smaller and more intimate carvings and casts and a slideshow presenting their public sculptures.

 

Although the works of Jenő and Tibor Szervátiusz have been exhibited in a number of major European cities, a comprehensive exhibitions has not been held for many decades. Our present exhibition is probably the most comrehensive and extensive ever produced. It includes the latest works of Tibor Szervátiusz, and unifies many pieces for the first time from public collections in Cluj and Budapest.

 

 

 

BRANCHES - Ázbej & Ázbej│Algiers – Budapest – Paris 

Opening: 26 July, 6 p.m.

Műcsarnok chamber room, 27 July – 11 September 2016. 

 

Interlinking generations, the co-operation of fathers and their children in the arts and disciplines make for inexhaustible, exciting and enlightening stories. An exhibition of father and son is proof positive that renewal need not begin by sweeping away the past, but often quite the contrary. The concept of this exhibition is to present some snapshots of intertwinements and junctions, without a specific system or judgement.

 

Architect father, artist son, each creating a unique architectural and artistic oeuvre. The exhibition presents the work of Sándor Ázbej and his son Kristóf.

 

Sándor Ázbej (1913–1998) was a Miklós Ybl Award-winning architect who designed, and coordinated the construction of, the 5 July 1962 Stadium in Algiers. His work paved the way for Hungarian-Algerian technical co-operation that went on for over two decades. Although it was modelled on the People’s Stadium in Budapest, then just a few years old, the Algerian stadium surpassed it in architectural and technical terms. It is an impressive building by international standards, serving the needs of the age in every respect. 

Between the late 1960s and the end of the 1980s Hungarian architects and engineers built some 160s facilities around Algiers. The buildings and facilities continue to serve as an organic part of Algeria’s architectural and technical infrastructure.

 

Kristóf Ázbej (1953) claims to have become attracted to the arts in the family environment. His most important work is a 52-square-metre giant, panoramic collage, which he worked on for fifteen years from 1981 onwards in his two-room studio apartment near Paris (Bagneux).

 

Time capsule, Kunstkammer, palimpsest game

The Bagneux panorama is the first item in the project entitled The great wall of the human adventure. Evocative of ancient cave art and the supercomputers (big data science) of recent times, the dazzlingly colourful ensemble of images is an imprint of human cultural history.

With a curious, mosaic-structured form and special aesthetic quality, the encyclopaedic collage wall/ornament affords viewers an amazing time travel.

Taking down the giant panoramic collage, transporting it to Hungary, restoring it and rebuilding a 1:1 replica of the original studio was supported by the Ministry of Human Resources and the National Cultural Fund in 2014–2015.

The collage will be open to public viewing for the first time in the Műcsarnok.

 

The Hari Seldon labyrinth

At the invitation of the French Millennium Commemorative Committee, in the summer of 1997 the architect father and the artist son worked in the concept of a world memorial. The world memorial took its name from one of the protagonists of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. The exhibition will present visualisations of the memorial that was never built, allowing an insight into the creative phases of what might be called a Gesamtkunstwerk megaproject.

 

Exhibition in the exhibition – Popup7 at the Műcsarnok

In the finissage week of the show the artist studio apartment will become a temporary exhibition space with one-day pop-up shows of artists including Károly Elekes, Pista Horror, Adél Kuli, Gábor Szinte, János Szinte, Tayler Patrick, Erik Tollas and Orsolya Lia Vető.