The Symbols of Socialist Art

The exhibits included György Galántai’s Szentendre action (1974)

Plans for the Szentendre action (“The place where we live”) in György Galántai’s diary of 1974

Galántai’s Szentendre action is a direct reference to Nóra Aradi’s book; it is an attempt at “didactic and dialectic identification”. Based on the intellectual debate on the role of realism in art and the structuralist trends of the time, Galántai used Aradi’s terminology to describe objects instead of works of art. As he said, “the point of the texts in the context of the action is that – in contrast to their original use – they are not linked to images, and thus lend new meaning to the objects and also to the texts themselves.” (Katalin Székely, curator)

Artpool – Fine Art

7-minute informative report about Artpool in the Fine Art series

György Galántai at the shooting of the report

COURAGE CONFERENCES
with the participation of the Artpool Art Research Center

COURAGE – connecting collections (Cultural opposition. The legacy of the opposition in former communist countries). Three-year international research project (2016—2019) within the framework of the EU’s Horizon 2020 funding programme. The aim of the project is to research the history of public and private collections preserving counter-cultural relics and analyse them in a broad-based social, political and cultural context, as well as to build an international online database of these institutions.
The Artpool Art Research Center, one of the most significant Hungarian institutions preserving such documents, presented its collections relevant in this context at numerous thematic COURAGE conferences and developed the section of the above database that pertains to Artpool’s collections.

Parallel Avant-garde - Pécs Workshop 1968–1980

In 1972 the Pécs Workshop participated in György Galántai’s Chapel Studio in Balatonboglár with several land art and landscape-shaping projects, then regarded as a novelty. Artpool contributed to the exhibition with documents about this, as well as with video interviews made for Edit Sasvári’s film titled Vacation, which tells the story of the chapel studio.

curators: Attila T. Doboviczki and József Készman

The next venue of the exhibition:
29 September–31 October 2017 - m21 Gallery, Pécs, Zsolnay Cultural Quarter, Pécs
Parallel Avant-garde – Pécs Workshop 1968–1980

Warschauer Punk Pakt. Punk im Ostblock 1977–1989

curator: Alexander Pehlemann

Artpool photos and posters loaned to the exhibition

With the Eyes of others:
Hungarian Artists of the Sixties and Seventies

Curator of the exhibition: András Szántó

A photo from the series: László Rajk, Ádám Kéry, Kriszta Jerger at Tamás Eskulits’s sculpturepARTy exhibition, Simon Iroda, 24 February 1979 (photo: György Galántai)

The curator evoked the art historical context for the material presented at the exhibition and in the catalogue by using 33 b&w documentary photos taken by György Galántai (1976–1979), which were loaned to the exhibition by Artpool.

netWorks

The exhibition titled netWorks organised by the MAGMA Contemporary Art Space presents a selection of network-based visual projects of Romanian, Hungarian and Slovenian artists. The exhibition included Mădălina Brașoveanu’s research project titled ARTISTS UNDER SURVEILLANCE: Traces of the Nagyvárad – Marosvásárhely – Sepsiszentgyörgy art network in the former Securitate archive, Judit Angel’s interview with network researcher Albert László Barabási and the The Garden of Correspondence Art / Ray Johnson website project from the Budapest-based Artpool Art Research Center.

curators: Ágnes-Evelin Kispál, József Bartha and Attila Kispál

Budburst. The early period of the Substitute Thirsters (1984–1987)

A work from Artpool’s collection. Plato’s Cave: World Receiver or the Story of a Case of Guilt, 1987, joint projects, mixed media, 35×52 cm

The New Budapest Gallery presents the early, underground and semi-public period of the group: its one-off productions and exhibitions in natural environments, urban private spaces and marginal culture houses; The Substitute Thirsters organised more than 25 events in the venue called Plato’s Cave in 1986 and 1987. The Artpool Art Research Center preserves numerous documents of this period which debuted at this exhibition.

ARTPOOL STUDY TRIP TO BREMEN

Studienzentrum für Künstlerpublikationen / Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst

Forschungsstelle Osteuropa an der Universität Bremen (FSO)

Study trip taken by five staff members of Artpool (Júlia Klaniczay, Dóra Halasi, Viktor Kotun, Kristóf Nagy and Anna Szirmai) in two important archives in Bremen

Artpool: Aktives Archiv zeitgenössischer Kunst in Ungarn - exhibition

Artpool: Aktives Archiv zeitgenössischer Kunst in Ungarn - symposium

Lecture/presentation by Júlia Klaniczay, Viktor Kotun, Anna Szirmai, Kristóf Nagy, Dóra Halasi and Isabelle Schwarz

Long Night of Museums in Artpool

‘Guided tours’ in the archive for groups of 12-15 by Dóra Halasi, Kristóf Nagy, Gabriella Schuller and Anna Szirmai, four times a day in 1.5-hour time slots

Long Night of Museums in Artpool

Research and interview by Alina Șerban & Ștefania Ferchedău (The Institute of the Present) on Artpool

György Galántai, Júlia Klaniczay, Alina Șerban and Ștefania Ferchedău in Artpool

The complete interview:
We Are Always Working on the Roots…
Interview with György Galántai and Júlia Klaniczay, Artpool

exhibition, installation, video – curator: György Galántai

Demonstration / Award / Nothing

These are the buzzwords of the largescale Artpool project of 2017, which also evoke the Kossuth Award laureate artist Endre Tót – who celebrates his 80th birthday this year – in the Valley of the Arts in Kapolcs.

The venue stretches from 55 Kossuth Street (K55) to 51 Kossuth Street (Area 51).
‘Tót Endre Street’ begins at the K55 exhibition space (where artists’ awards and award works can be viewed in the evenings) and ends in Area 51.

Tricolour commemorative flags inscribed TÓT 80 are flying at the entrance to Area 51; copies of Tót’s works and video documents can be viewed in the living room plus kitchen of the ivy house and in the cellar showroom.

Two-sided “Zero / Nothing” protest banners are hanging in the covered courtyard (and can be taken down to be used in a ‘protest action’). Nothing quotes from Albert Einstein, Dezső Tandori, Vilém Flusser, Béla Hamvas, Lajos Kossuth, Martin Luther King and others can be read on the entire territory of Area 51: on posts and bits of paper, tress, objects and walls.

Nothing cinema in the shed screening 3-4 minute long videos (we cannot live without nothing!)

All this is staged in a sound space, where various sound sets created by sound footage coming from the most unexpected places hold together the space both locally and contextually and lead visitors from one venue to the next, lifting them out from the cavalcade of the festival.

The books and catalogues that can be read at the venue provide further information about the exhibition and Artpool.
In the end, those who want can have their T-shirts printed with the Area 51 sign in the gazebo.

Commercial walk with Nothing banners

Commercial walk with music among the visitors of the Kapolcs festival, starting and ending in Area 51

State of the Art Archives conference:
Artpool Art Research Center

Júlia Klaniczay’s presentation on Artpool was read out by Anne Thurmann-Jajes as Júlia was ill.

Archivos del común II. El archivo anómico - seminar/conference

Conference programme (pdf)

The conference was hallmarked by György Galántai’s envelope from 2006

Grammar and methodologies of the Artpool Art Research Center
Júlia Klaniczay’s presentation was read out by Kristóf Nagy as Júlia was ill.

The conference volume is available in Spanish and English, and contains Kristóf Nagy’s essay.

Gábor Altorjay. Wanted Works (1967–2017)

curator: Kata Benedek [Facebook event]

At the opening: discussion about the alternative cultural groups of the 1960s, the role of friendship, networking, the difficulties of starting a career, skipping classes and dance.

Gyula Konkoly, Enikő Balla, Gábor Altorjay, Annamária Szőke (moderator), Kata Benedek (curator)

In the photo, from left to right: Tamás Szentjóby, Gábor Altorjay and István Dárday, Sopot /Poland/ ca. 1963.

The backbone of the exhibition is constituted by the reproductions of works Altorjay had made before his emigration to West Germany in 1967 and had gone missing: mainly happening- and samizdat concepts, poems and private letters. Allowing an insight beyond the artist’s well-known happening Lunch, these exhibits provide an outline of the artist’s stance, which was consistently critical of the regime and was discernible already in his early years. The exhibited manuscripts and documents demonstrate the conflict between commercial and cultural value, resulting from the classic issue of the original and the copy.

Economize! On the Relationship between Art and Economy

curator: Katalin Timár

The photo shows the works loaned by the Artpool archive to the exhibition titled Economize!
On the wall - Andrej Tisma: Art Strike.
In the glass display - Mark Bloch, Stewart Home, Géza Perneczky, Gábor Tóth and Andrej Tisma, as well as issues of Smile Magazine

The Presence of Nothing – Documents from Area 51

The site-specific adaptation of the Kapolcs summer project of 2017 on Endre Tóth's 80th birthday at the Artpool P60 exhibition venue. Curator: György Galántai
Facebook event | invitation (pdf)

György Galántai: 21 Photos from the Mukhina Project / 1980–83

Photo: György Hegedűs, 2017

The exhibited photographs document the HOMMAGE À VERA MUKHINA – György Galántai’s Performance with Júlia Klaniczay and G. A. Cavellini (Heroes’ Square, Budapest, 1980)

Publication linked to the exhibition: The Mukhina Project. Interpretations of Being in György Galántai’s Oeuvre, Vintage Gallery, 2018

Péter Halász Archive – exhibition and conversation

invitation (pdf)

Gabriella Schuller in conversation with theatre historian Dr Magdolna Jákfalvi and dramaturg Anna Veress on the occasion of the Péter Halász Archive made accessible for researchers

Subjects discussed: Péter Halász's new theatre series titled “Power Money Fame Beauty Love” (1994), and the PH Archive project (2013) of the University of Theatre and Film Arts

Visitors can view the newspaper articles used for the production and the scripts and watch the short films made by the students.
Péter Halász’s spirit is evoked in the background videos.
Curators: György Galántai and Gabriella Schuller
Facebook event

“You’ve got 1243 unread messages.” The Last Generation Before the Internet. Their Lives

The exhibition titled “You’ve got 1243 unread messages” deals with the recent past, where building relations was still done in an analogue way rather than digitally.

The artworks and ordinary objects selected for the exhibition are microhistorical proof of some 20th-century persons or entire trends, which continue to call into doubt the borderlines between art and everyday life. They are about the culture of private memory, mutual networking and experimental works.
The exhibits mediate the experiments carried out by their makers to redefine private space, and create a parallel world within the reality defined by the media and politics (excerpt from the curatorial concept).

Photos: Andrejs Strokins. Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, 2017

The exhibition presented several historical Artpool projects, including the audio material and photo documentation of the Budapest–Vienna–Berlin Concert Over the Phone (1983), and the Everybody with Anybody rubber stamp event (1982), where the audience in Riga had the opportunity to use the replicas of the original rubber stamps.

András Baranyay (1938–2016)

curators: István Hajdu and László Százados

András Baranyay’s works from Artpool’s collection at the exhibition