Going for Gold at Documenta
Time Out Budapest (July 2012)

While side-stepping the impossible expectations of the art world with the aphoristic one-liner that ‘the concept is to have no concept’, there are nevertheless important hints in this year’s Documenta as to where contemporary art may be headed. The curatorial statement is peppered with references to post-humanist thought, a radical branch of eco-philosophy that puts the non-human at the centre and represents a significant challenge to the individualist and anthropocentric assumptions of the art world...(more)

The Past Reloaded
Time Out Budapest (June 2012)

Until recently, the story of Budapest’s public monuments since the revolution of 1989 appeared to be a closed chapter. The worst offending bronzes from the communist era, such as portraits of Lenin and liberating Soviet soldiers, were removed from city squares and relocated to a custom-built statue park on the outskirts of town where, stripped of their political gravitas and quarantined from public space, they could be enjoyed as ironic relics of the past or even for their aesthetic qualities. Less controversial statues were left in peace, while some monuments were modified or transformed to rid them of their socialist connotations. Today however the debate around the fate of surviving left-leaning monuments to cultural and historical figures originally favoured by the communist regime has been dramatically reopened, while apologists for Admiral Horthy have begun to clamour for a statue of Hungary’s controversial wartime leader...(more)

Riding the Cultural Tsunami
Time Out Budapest, April 2012

The underlying problem with many of the radical changes to the structure and personnel of Hungarian cultural institutions is that they will be very difficult to reverse. Appointing an unsuitable person to the leadership of a major art institution has a direct influence on what is shown and the overall profile of the venue, and while it can take years to build up the international reputation of a theatre or gallery, its precious stock of symbolic capital can evaporate in a moment. Ultimately the consequences of closing a cherished art space or theatre cannot be measured in purely financial terms, as what is also lost is the living archive in the stage floor or gallery walls that preserves the collective experience of generations of audiences, actors and artists...(more)

Cluj Art Scene in the Spotlight
Time Out Budapest April 2012

Always in search of the next best thing, a stream of art world cognoscenti have already made the pilgrimage to the northern Transylvanian town to visit galleries and artist studios associated with the Cluj School, which bares comparison with similar periods of creativity in cities such as Leipzig. Their ‘discoveries’ have been catapulted into the high velocity world of glossy art magazines, commercial galleries and exclusive art fairs from New York to Basel, where they are currently exotic art flavour of the month...(more)

Just Say No - Tibor Horvath in ACB Gallery
Time Out Budapest, February 2012

The pun in the title of Tibor Horváth’s exhibition, in common with the humour that underpins this rebel artist’s work, is mostly at the expense of patriarchy and chauvinism. Domináns nem can be read either as ‘the dominant sex’, referring to dubious assumptions about the inherent leading role of males, or as the ‘dominant no’, pointing to the problem of denial in Hungarian politics. The many twists and turns in Hungarian political life over recent months have galvanised the artist to respond through intelligent visual commentary and energetic conceptual actions that range from word play and sketches to ideas materialised as crafted objects...(more)

Hungarian Art in the Balance
Time Out Budapest December 2011

As 2011 draws to an end, it’s hard to resist pondering the highs and lows of the last year and wondering what the future holds in store for the local art scene. Politics and economics loom large, with nothing certain or sacred anymore in the life of art institutions, but beneath the surface of the battle for survival, the rumble of new creative energy can be felt. It’s a well-worn cliché that art flourishes in a crisis and any shake up of the system also provides opportunities for new ideas, people and spaces to rise to the occasion...(more)

Missing Paragraph - 1.§ Hungary shall be a Republic
Time Out Budapest November 2011

Turning the corner into one of the underused wings of the Gozdu udvar - where dozens of empty retail units are a sign of stalled economic activity – we came across one of the most famous Hungarian dissidents of the communist era standing alone folding paper flags. Each flag carries a brass-rubbing-style imprint that states ‘1.§ Hungary shall be a Republic’, a significant paragraph from the current Hungarian Constitution that has been left out of the new Fundamental Law that comes into effect on 1st January 2012...(more)

Cancelled at the Mucsarnok
Time Out Budapest October 2011

'This autumn has brought a string of unexpected cancellations to the programme of one of Budapest’s most prominent art spaces - the Műcsarnok or Kunsthalle - that can only partly be explained by the deteriorating financial situation. The last minute changes to the exhibition line up also reflect the priorities of the institution’s new management...(more)'

Risk Free in Venice
Time Out Budapest August 2011

While many of the East European pavilions dwell, as usual, on the trauma of communism, from Russia’s surprisingly dated presentation of the artistic underground of the 1970s, to a familiar reworking of totalitarian symbols in the Serbian pavilion, Croatia avoided the clichés and stereotypes of East European art by enlisting a contemporary dance troupe to reinterpret the oeuvre of performance artist Tomislav Gotovac. The Polish pavilion went one step further by inviting an Israeli artist, Yael Bartana, to represent their country with a mesmerising trilogy of films about a campaign to bring three million Jews back to Poland. Lighter themes are to be found in the Indian pavilion, where Gigi Scaria, an Indian artist who happens to be represented by Budapest gallery Videospace, has created a brilliant lift installation that takes you up and down without moving...(more)

Mladen Stilinović (Review)
Time Out Budapest, June 2011

For someone known for his tongue in cheek celebration of the laziness of the East European artist, the abundance of drawings, photos, videos and paintings in this major retrospective of the work of Croatian artist Mladen Stilinović does not exactly suggest idleness. The show lays out the full range of the artist’s prodigious output - from his experimental phase in the early 70s, to membership of the rebellious Group of Six in Zagreb, and from characteristic post-Tito works exploring the decay of communist ideology in the 1980s, to his emotive response to the trauma of the Balkan War...(more)

High Price (Review)
Art Monthly, May 2011

The interplay between the commercial and critical wings of contemporary art are at the centre of this persuasive account by Isabelle Graw, who as editor of the art magazine Texte zur Kunst is herself an influential player in the scene she analyses. The relationship between art and the market comes across in the book as one of uneasy symbiosis, in which mutual attraction and repulsion coexist, a situation which the author characterises as a ‘dialectical unity of opposites.’  High Price: Art Between the Market and Celebrity Culture distinguishes itself both from the ranks of practical guidebooks to contemporary collecting and from the sensational exposés of jet-set art-world lifestyles that proliferated during the last art boom, through its higher brow intention to submit the art market to critical and social analysis. Among the many issues considered in this study are the effects of celebrity culture on artists and collectors, the role of critics and art historians in the mechanisms of the art market, and the wider forces at work in the ongoing transformation of contemporary art...(more)    

Art on the Lake
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
Time Out Budapest, May 2011

Back in 2000, Hungary celebrated the turn of the Millennium with an exhibition of contemporary Hungarian sculpture in the artificial pond behind Heroes Square that doubles as an ice-skating rink in the winter. More than a decade on, to mark the Hungarian presidency of the European Union, two dozen artists from across Europe have again been invited to show their most waterproof works in the atmospheric setting of the City Park lake. In addition to the practical question of how to adapt contemporary artworks to pond life, the artists in the show face the deeper challenge of how to rise above the banality of decorative sculpture and state-sponsored Europhilia to make a meaningful artistic statement...(more)

The Shock of the New - the latest additions to the Ludwig Museum Budapest's collection - Time Out Budapest April 2011

Museums sometimes have trouble keeping up with the latest tendencies in art - even those that call themselves contemporary - as they typically lag behind fast-moving commercial galleries, highly-motivated collectors and independent curators in the rush to stay ahead of the curve...(more)

Many Mountains to Climb - contemporary art foundation opens in Budapest Time Out Budapest March 2011

At a time when the local art world is awash with rumours of impending mergers, decapitations and downsizings of public art institutions, the decision to open up a new privately-funded platform for contemporary art is a welcome move against the tide. Indeed, the fledgling art space on Vérhalom utca in the uphill, upmarket second district goes against the grain in a number of interesting ways, and is on the right track to becoming a recognised feature of the rolling landscape of the art scene...(more)

VIVA AVIVA - The Turner Prize Magyarul
Time Out Budapest October 2010

Based on the experience of last year, the AVIVA exhibition is likely to be eclectic, diverse and surprising, considering that this kurátormentes extravaganza is also a rare opportunity for Hungary’s most innovative and exciting contemporary artists to do whatever they like in the country’s grandest art space...(more)

Myths of the Modern Nation - Allan Sekula
Time Out Budapest, July 2010

Seeing a show about Polish immigrants and their relation to their home country in Budapest may open up a number of interesting parallels and questions. If the same approach were taken to the Hungarian minority abroad, what would it look like? Or what about the new immigrant communities in Eastern Europe, do they have the same passionate relationship to the Motherland as the Chicago Poles? More widely, changes in communication and increased possibilities for travel have reduced the distance between immigrant communities and their home country, closing the gap between the myth and reality of national identities...(more)

Berlin Calling
Time Out Budapest, June 2010

The easyjet set of roaming artists, critics and curators was visible underwhelmed by this year’s showcase of contemporary art trends in the unofficial capital of the international art scene. On the one hand, the show, entitled ‘what is waiting out there’, offered little in the way of spectacular new productions, with the curator cautiously opting to re-contextualise works from the last decade, such as John Smith’s 2001 video Frozen War on media representation of the airstrikes on Afghanistan, rather than commission fresh responses to the Biennial’s promising theme of contemporary realism...(more)

(Probably) the Smallest Gallery in the World
Time Out Budapest (May 2010)

It is hard to resist the pull of the Major Spaces, with their merry-go-round of budding stars, market values, glossy press packs and VIP openings, all made possible by an impressive infrastructure of brightly-lit spaces, cavernous storage areas, pokey curatorial offices and bored attendants. But could it be that bigger and more, does not always mean better?...(more) 

Hajnal Nemeth Crash - Passive Interview
Time Out Budapest (March 2010)

Crash – Passive Interview touches on the indeterminateness of individual destiny, the insight brought by near death experience, as well as the unsustainability of modern civilisation’s love-affair with fast cars, of which the manly BMW brand and the unrestricted speeds of the German autobahn are a potent symbol.  In one sense, the installation can be seen as an ultra-advanced road safety informational, while more metaphorically the work resonates with the experience and anticipation of ‘crash’ in everything from economic meltdown to ecological disaster and the emotional turmoil of human relationships...(more)   

The Authentic Glenn Brown
Time Out Budapest (February 2010)

Glenn Brown is what is known in the trade as a second generation appropriationist, meaning that he borrows freely from the storehouse of art history, plundering images of other people’s art and giving them an unexpected twist. While the New York appropriationists of the early 80s were motivated by a desire to politically criticise the canonical works they copied, Glen Brown piles on the layers of bare-faced bootlegging, deft pop references and slick touches of originality so thickly, that his ultimate intentions remain indecipherable...(more)

Transitland: Video Art from East and Central Europe
Time Out Budapest (January 2010)

Opening two weeks after the second post-communist decade officially ended, Transitland is a late arrival at the bitter-sweet party of reminiscence and reflection on the twentieth anniversary of 1989. Parallel to the revolutionary political changes of the perestroika era, 1989 was also a turning point in the history of video art in Eastern Europe, with ex-Bloc artists quick to explore the communicative possibilities of a cheap, censor-proof and accessible medium. The result of an EU-style collaborative international project, Transitland presents the rapid development of the video genre in the region from an archive of 100 key works by artists from twenty-five countries...(more)

Check Mate in Vienna
Time Out Budapest (December 2009)

Ten years on from After the Wall, the groundbreaking exhibition that shaped our understanding of East European art in the first post-communist decade, many of the original players are back in MUMOK in a poignant rerun of the original show. Curated by Berlin-based art historian Bojana Pejić, who was also the co-curator of the 1999 exhibition, Gender Check takes a flexible reading of gender theory as a guide to the legacy of East and Central European art since the 1960s. Gender Check is a very large show, made up of 400 works by over 200 artists in all possible media, and is thankfully organised chronologically as well as thematically, starting with the female heroes of Soviet labour in Socialist Realism, moving up through the 1970s photography of orgasms, to contemporary works that combine sex, capitalism and pornography...(more) 

Upstairs, Downstairs at Budapest Kunsthalle
Time Out Budapest (November 2009)

Currently the cavernous main galleries of the Műcsarnok are given over to the solo show of an Austrian in his 30s, while hidden away in the basement project space is the exhibition of a mid-generation Hungarian artist. Although very different in scale, the two exhibitions make an interesting pairing, as they share a fascination with squirming bodies, tortured relationships and the fetish of the domestic interior. Salzburg-based artist Markus Schinwald has expanded his multi-disciplinary oeuvre of sculpture, painting, video and installation in a largely successful attempt to fill the vast upstairs rooms, while Zsolt Keserue has pushed the limited possibilities of the Menű Pont space to the maximum, to produce an intense and conceptually-focussed video installation..(more)

Hyped, Fresh and Alternative
Time Out Budapest (September 2009)

Hard on the heels of the Derkovits Prize summer show at the Ernst Museum, this month there are three more good opportunities to encounter the latest achievements of Hungarian art. The Műcsarnok opens its autumn season with an exhibition of the work of six contestants for a new Hungarian contemporary art competition modelled on the UK’s much-hyped Turner Prize. A jury of prominent art critics has each picked an artist under 40 with a recent major solo show under their belt as their candidate for the 5 million forint prize, with the winner to be announced in a ceremony at the closing of the exhibition. The public also has the opportunity to vote for their choice of best artist for the more modest audience prize, as part of the overall scheme to stimulate public interest in contemporary Hungarian art and its leading personalities...(more)

Degrees of Modernity
Exindex (April 2009)

Reviews three exhibitions dealing with the phenomenon of national representation within a globalised art context. Arctic Hysteria is a show of Finnish art curated for an international audience, Mi Vida is an exhibition based on a Spanish collection of international art, while Altermodern is the 2009 edition of the British art triennial that trespasses national borders...(more)

The Exclusive World of Art Power
Zivot umjetnosti: journal for contemporary art no.83

Sarah Thorton: Seven Days in the Art World Granta, London, 2008. Boris Groys: Art Power MIT, Cambridge MA, 2008

What these two recent books have in common is that they both set out to reveal the inner mechanisms and driving forces of the contemporary art world. While one author places the art world squarely within the arena of rampant liberal capitalism, the other positions it within the contradictory frame of post-communism. In one account the market reigns all powerful, while the other acknowledges the possibility of a position outside the rules of the market, represented by historical and contemporary forms of ‘propaganda art’. The author of Art Power is maverick art theorist Boris Groys, while Seven Days in the Art World was written by self-appointed anthropologist of the international art scene, Sarah Thornton, and despite the differences, they both provide provocative insights into the internal power relations of the art world...(more)

Vacuum Noise
IDEA (Summer 2009)

Vacuum Noise plunges in with the alluring question ‘has the working class gone to heaven?’, soliciting the response of leading contemporary artists to the legacy of twenty years of global capitalism in the East and South. The exhibition, curated by Nikolett Erőss, seeks to examine the renewed visibility of the industrial worker as victim of the intensive global capitalist strategy of seeking out cheap labour anywhere in the world and the human cost of rolling factory closures. The ever-flexible Trafó Galeria space was decked out in subdued industrial grey for the occasion, with low walls used to produce cubicles that are reminiscent of the monotonous sub-divisions of factory space. The installation creates a serious and challenging setting to absorb six works that broach the massive subject of the real lives and fictional representation of workers...(more)

Venice Biennial
Time Out Budapest (July 2009)

The major exhibition at the Venice Biennial is curated by Daniel Birnbaum, an art world celebrity famous for his hard-edged philosophical approach to contemporary art, who on this occasion went for safe choices in an elegantly installed exhibition that offers few surprises. Making Worlds aims for gravity with the inclusion of the best known artists from the Sixties, here turned into the great predecessors of the younger generation of art superstars. Yoko Ono shared a life-time achievement award with John Baldassari, the American conceptual artist, whose huge banner reading ‘I will not make any more boring art’ confuses tourists on the Grand Canal...(more)

Hungary is searching for a star
Time Out Budapest (June 2009)

Romania has Mircea Cantor and Dan Perjovschi, Bulgaria Netko Solakov, while Albania boasts a trio of big names: Anri Sala, Adrian Paci and Sislej Xhafa. High up to the north east of the old Iron Curtain the Lithuanians have Deimantas Narkevicius, while Polish flags are raised with Pawel Althamer and Zofia Kulik, the Czechs have Katerina Šeda, the Slovak’s Roman Ondak, and Croatia is represented by Mladen Stilinović and Sanja Iveković. Slovenia is a special case, as 90% of their artists are world famous. But what’s up with Hungary, where is the Hungarian art star shining in the cosmos of the international art scene?...(more)

Arctic Hysteria
Timeout Budapest (Feb 2009)

After a successful run at PS1 Gallery, the influential off-shoot of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where it was dubbed a ‘surprise sleeper’ by art critics for provoking more interest than national survey shows from small nations usually do, Arctic Hysteria has now infected Budapest.  The Finnish partner in this curatorial joint venture, Marketta Seppälä, explains that since ‘Finns are born in snow, live in snow, and die in snow’ they have a deep relationship to the natural world. The picture that emerges from this ambitious exhibition is therefore not a distillation of Finnishness, but represents instead an understanding that human culture is part of the ‘cycles of nature’.  The American co-curator of the show, Alanna Heiss, who is also the director of PS1 Gallery, introduces the concept of ‘arctic hysteria’ in more personal and anecdotal terms. Although in some ways ‘too important and too old’ to undertake a survey of young artists, thanks to a ‘complete blood transfusion’ in Helsinki some years ago she feels a special kinship with Finland, because the ‘pure Finnish blood’ coursing through her veins provides her with ‘unique insight into this mysterious and beautiful country.’...(more)

Three Colours Red
Exindex September 2008

Miklós Erhardt, Thomas Hirschhorn and Isa Rosenberger at Vienna Secession July-September 2008

‘Seeing a long way into the West’

Austrian artist Isa Rosenberger’s exhibition at Secession consists of a series of projects that reflect on the socialist past in Eastern Europe. Her socially-engaged film, A Monument for the Women’s Centre (2006) focuses on the lives of women who are former employees of a defunct DDR chemical factory and their attempt to combat the media image of East German women as victims of the transition by creating a contemporary monument. Speaking in the distanced tone of the specialist, the artist poses a series of direct questions to the women, such as ‘Why are you a double loser?’

Manifesta Reaches New Heights
Exindex (Aug 2008)

Under the auspicious motto ‘It’s happening’, Manifesta 7 boldly opened to the public this July in the mountainous Italian regions of Trentino and South Tyrol. This most diffuse edition of the European biennial takes place in four locations that are more than 100 km apart, and situated along a historic route connecting the Roman and Germanic worlds. Highest up the Alps lies Fortezza, a colossal Habsburg fortification and the only place where all the Manifesta curators undertook a joint venture. The other three venues were awarded to individual curatorial teams, Bolzano went to the Raqs Media Collective, Anselm Franke and Hila Peleg got Trento and Adam Budak was stationed in Rovereto, together they invited more than 180 artists to participate. The large number of curators, artists and venues might speak about the ambition to reconnect with the previous series of successful Manifesta shows and at the same time overshadow the last minute cancellation of Manifesta 6 in Cyprus two years ago...(more)

European Biennial in Search of a Soul
Art Monthly (Aug 2008)

The organisers of this year’s Manifesta can breathe a collective sigh of relief that the seventh edition of the European biennial of contemporary art is actually happening. After the trauma of the eleventh hour cancellation of Manifesta 6 in Cyprus due to an eruption of local sensitivities, it is somewhat of a miracle that the biennial is back from the brink. Beyond just happening, Manifesta 7, which takes place in the mountainous Italian provinces of Trentino and South Tyrol, is an attempt to return to the spiritual roots and sense of mission of the ‘Manifesta Decade’ and restore its tarnished credibility. Manifesta 7 steers well clear of politics, which is understandable given that the curatorial desire to foster peace between Turkish and Greek Cypriots in Nicosia backfired so disastrously. Consequently, the concepts of the four exhibitions that make up the Biennial, curated by Adam Budak, Anselm Franke and Hila Peleg, and the Raqs Media Collective, deal with abstract notions of regionalism, European identity and the residues of industrial culture...(more)

Gerald Raunig, Art and Revolution:
Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century
Art Monthly (May 2008)

The theoretical basis for Art and Revolution comes from the distillation of the core elements of Hardt and Negri’s post-Marxist epic Empire, an essential reference point in current discussions of the revolutionary potential of contemporary art. Revolution should be understood not as a ‘one dimensional attempt to take over the state apparatus’, but rather as a triad of ‘insurrection, resistance and constituent power’. Gerald Raunig takes issue with celebrity theorist Slavoj Žižek’s mischievous campaign to rehabilitate Lenin and the tactics of the October Revolution, which throws a Bolshevik spanner in the smooth, tripartite ‘revolutionary machine’ theorised by Hardt and Negri. Art and Revolution is a considered intervention in the delicately poised debate on the relevance of post-Fordist theory to art by a Viennese philosopher who is himself a leading figure in the field...(more)