We all collect something. Some of us collect shells, some feathers, colored pieces of glass smoothed by the waves of the sea, phone cards, badgers, ceramic pots, tribal masks or fossils. We all share the infinitely human desire to collect. The collectors, hunting for fossils, shells, zoological creatures, pieces of art or books had presented their unique treasures to the public already in the 1600’s in the so-called ‘wunderkammers’. The collections known as ‘wonder rooms’ consisted of extraordinary and exceptional objects that told stories about the miracles and oddities of nature.The Société house has now become a wonder room, the spaces of which welcome an international group exhibition that offers a journey to a hybrid visual universe of rituality, functionalism and abstraction, never seen before in Hungary, and displays some of the miracles of contemporary art.The artists invited to the exhibition share the passion for fearless experimenting, the courage to step out from the conventional and traditional galleries to throw out fine art itself from its century-old ivory towers and to display their art in a new context, before a new audience.The exhibition presents the full range of modern materials used by the young generation of contemporary art; hence, it shows a large variety of works of art and such artistic diversity is a significant focal point of the exhibition. The invited eleven young artists have brought ceramic sculptures, plaster objects decorated with feathers, pieces of art made of neon tubes, leatherette, glass, plastic and rubber or even steel propelled by a disco engine.Besides that, the exhibition intends to test our personal relations to private (works of art) and public (the multifunctional exhibition space), putting the visitors off deliberately from the traditional meaning of enjoyment of art while analyzing the monomaniac passion of society for the material world. The exhibition aims to make the visitors oscillate between the symbolic and practical use of the works of art and supersede the preconceptions related to contemporary art.The objects, even if they are presented in a contemporary ‘wunderkammer’, placed in glass-cases or just spread all around the house, keep the focus always on the infinitely humanist act of collecting. Just like these pieces of art were the everyday- or ritual objects of a distant culture, brought to us to question our understanding of the difference between a work of art and a functional object.
Exhibiting artists:
Benczúr Emese (HU), Ember Sári (BR-HU), Svetlana Fialova (SK), Habima Fuchs (CZ), Győri Andrea Éva (HU), Keresztes Zsófia (HU), Kiss Adrian (HU-RO), Olga Micinska (PL), Moizer Zsuzsanna (HU), Ulbert Ádám (HU)
Curator: Sárvári Zita
Sponsors: The Slovak Institute in Budapest, Polish Institute in Budapest
Photo credit: Bíró Dávid
Link to Société's site here
