Where should we move, my darling? – Simulator
17 February 2010 – 19 March 2010The INDA Gallery presents the exhibition of an artist couple, a divergent project based on a common concept. The exhibited objects are not artworks in the traditional sense, they simulate everyday outdoor and indoor situations, and most importantly, they raise questions. They examine the personal effects of a roundabout, a police line or the requisition of a homeless situation (the sleeping-bag object of Tomi Budha) and their immediate perception in a different genre. The two artists, as well as the guest artists, Tomi Budha and Eleonóra Smúró represent the contemporary artist's existence and its controversies in an unusual, associative material and visual world together, and at the same time in unique, supreme methods of expression.Eszter Ágnes Szabó emphasizes the traditional women's occupations above everydayness and even oblivion. She takes the useful pastime of our grandmothers, the embroidery and its conventional media, the coverlets, tapestries and pillow-cases, and changes them into contemporary communicational surfaces.Tamás Ilauszky bases painting on the world of pop-art, placing it in the circle of graphic novels and caricatures. His paintings often resemble graffiti, posters, or the illustrations of Ludas Matyi, and at the same time they are completely unique.Their art fits the past along the conceptual definition of contemporary art, but it is not linked to it sentimentally. Using certain elements, it represents the present, and thus, the works speak the languages of generations.
Brigitta Muladi art historian
The exhibition concept of Tamás Ilauszky and Eszter Ágnes Szabó
We have been living together for a long time, and although we have two children, we are still not settled. We always long to leave. We do not demand more esteem for our work, but we always wonder if there is any other occupation that has such an obscure definition and role in society like artists have. Fortunately, we could examine this strange existence and privilege in various societies, and the partial results of these investigations are the exhibited works.
Our work brings the art peripheries in focus, and besides creating, it also covers writing, educating and participating in other theoretical and social processes (Hints Institute). We try to observe the processes around us in an amusing way, but in order to achieve this, we need to maintain a strict distance so that we can keep our objectivity, but the content we provide should serve others as a guide.Paying attantion, the exact visual and content observation, estrangement, competition (victory and defeat), communicational and other situations, the literary thinking and use of language, the domestic scientific and fictional thinking (space exploration) appear in the context that we use as a concomitant of art and compatible science in our everyday life as well, it is our way of life. We cannot evaluate certain phenomena as they are, but we examine their extensions with the help of our techniques: painting, sculpture, photography, embroidery, the use of objects, and the help of guest artists.Tamás Ilauszky is a sculptor. His favourite material is marble, but he placed it into an abstract structure, in which either the sculpture becomes movable (Lapis Mobilis, Erlkönig, Two men-stone), or it is placed into a light situation, where the sculptures live the gesture-like, longer or shorter life of graffiti (Mini-mental 1-4). The sculptures appear in urban spaces and become the dramatis personae of stories. The Two men-stone, for example, is connected to the painting series in almost a concrete way, because only two people can move it. One is them is the artist, who needs help to move his work. His paintings of two characters also represent similarly important situations in life, in which the artist either identifies himself with one of the characters, or gets lost somewhere in the story due to his uncertain existence. The audience can re-live this by watching the series. They can get into the spacious, but often blank world of big spaces, where the presence of the main characters matters only for the contents, but in reality, similarly to Claud Lorrain and the scenery painting of romanticism, they are only excuses for painting the scenery. We recognize the situations and places, no matter how fictional they are. The literary contents of the titles can help in the recognition.Eszter Ágnes Szabó finished her intermedia studies, therefore, her thoughts and works are characterized by the extensive potentials of the genre. In this exhibition, the familiar and the public mingle, and the life and private objects of the family are transferred into the urban context. As a member of the Hints Institute, she is an active participant of urban culture and the national discourse of social relations. Indeed, her independent activity seems to be the building of her own, private surroundings with the concerning experience of urban events.Among the exhibited works there are the Clark Ádám Square roundabout simulator table-cloth of 2009 and the ufo landing site table-cloth that provides a possibility to meet strangers in a familiar way. She exhibits domestic textiles, such as tapestries, table-cloths and tagged bedclothes (that could replace initials in the 21st century), the imprints of the social and cultural phenomena at home that influence the weekdays.The interior design of the exhibition reproduces the speculative environment of a home and the people living in it, from where we can travel a long way in space and time. Virillio said that our ultimate vehicle of transport is the armchair in front of the television. It is not the TV that we put in the centre, but our surroundings, the city, and the consideration of the opportunities in the cities.
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