The solo exhibition of Gábor Gerhes, one of the most important Hungarian representatives of Hungarian conceptual art opening at the Csikász Gallery in Veszprém is a concentrated selection of the artist's recent works.
Most of the works have been selected from the 2013 Trafó Gallery exhibition Neue Ordnung, which was named International Art Critics Association (AICA) Exhibition of the Year and the highly successful exhibition Meaning at the Robert Capa Centre for Contemporary Photography in Budapest in 2015-16 along with new works, some of which will be on view to the public for the first time.
The most important feature of Gerhes' multifaceted art which ranges widely through photography and installation is the creation of spaces that are capable of accommodating specific mechanisms of meaning-making, in which history is both fictional and real, private and collective, timeless and temporal.
Gerhes' archive is both haunting (Unheimlich/Eerie) and ironic, obscure and banal, cruel and sentimental. In this order, all elements can be approached through linguistic constructions and pictorial representations - wherever the viewer goes, everything ends up in a meaning based on historical contexts.
However, the continuous production of report generation does not lead to clear statements, but above all raises further questions. Like the work that gives the exhibition its title - The Four Elements, 1937 - the most notorious work of 20th century painting, Gerhes' video paraphrase of Hitler's favourite painter's Adolf Ziegler. Or the marching banners made of boar skins with metal inscriptions on them (Eternal Light, Immediate Enlightenment, Infinite Liberation). But also the sinister series of photographs of imaginary secret societies, whose members could be branded illuminati, masonic, Jesuit, communist, terrorist or extraterrestrial.
All of this gives the visitor a double sense of homeliness and revulsion and the image brought together by the associations and allusions offered is an attempt to separate document from fiction, play from tragedy*.
Gábor Gerhes (Budapest, 1962)
Munkácsy Mihály Prize-winning artist, university lecturer. Between 2006-2015 he was a lecturer at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design and from 2010 he has been a lecturer at the photography department of Budapest Metropolitan University. Former vice president of the Young Artists Association. Member of the Association of Hungarian Photographers and of the Intermedia Section of MAOE.
His creative work has been recognized with several grants, the Eötvös Foundation Grant of the Ministry of Culture, the Derkovits Grant, the Munkácsy and other numerous awards. In 2004-2005 he received a French state artist grant to the Recollettes in Paris and in 2006 he was invited by Kulturkontakt to Vienna. In 2014 he was awarded the AICA (International Association of Art Critics) Grand Prize. In 2014 he was included in the selection of the 30 best Hungarian photographers by Kreatív magazine.
Since 1985 he has regularly exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions in the most important Hungarian exhibition spaces: the Ludwig Museum, the Art Gallery/Műcsarnok, the National Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Centre, the Modem in Debrecen, Szeged, Pécs, Dunaújváros, Veszprém, Székesfehérvár, Miskolc and Szombathely. As well as in many important exhibition venues abroad.
His works are represented in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art - Ludwig Museum, the Budapest Picture Gallery - Kiscelli Museum, the Vintage Gallery, the KOGART Foundation, the Hungarian National Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Hermann Ottó Museum in Miskolc, the Miskolc Gallery, the Public Foundation for Modern Art (ICA) in Dunaújváros, the Hungarian Museum of Photography, the Szombathely Picture Gallery, the St. Stephen King Museum in Székesfehérvár and the MODEM collection in Debrecen.
His works are held abroad in the H. Ringier Collection in Switzerland and the Kunsthaus Glarus, the world's largest corporate photography collection, the Stiftung DZ Bank AG - Frankfurt am Main Collection in Germany and in numerous other private collections in Hungary and abroad.
The artist is represented in Hungary by acb Gallery.
He lives and works in Budapest and Balatonalmádi.
*Based on the text by József Mélyi, Report Catalogue edited by Emese Mucsi, Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Centre 2016.
