Géczi immu's Pets exhibition is a comprehensive presentation of his decollages from the past decade, unique in Hungarian art.
Decollage is a mural-like art form built from found material, from the layering, manipulation, scraping, transforming, re-cutting and destruction of street posters. The French classic of this genre, Jacques Villeglé said: "all advertising, all propaganda, this condensed version of civilisation has been brought to the realm of happy illegibility by tearing".
Coming from the field of poetry, János Géczi became interested in the aesthetics of the scattering, drifting, transformation and destruction of mass-produced texts and images, the glimpses of meanings hidden in the depths of contingencies. The particular mass image/text experience of contemporary civilisation has led him on a voyage of discovery - after transforming newspaper pages and photocopies, he has now been working on billboards for some time.
"Anyone who tears up posters is not only destroying an image system, but also doing archaeological work. Sometimes paper zones, similar to tectonically stacked rock layers are revealed, providing unambiguous clues about the nature of the cellulose and the glue, and sometimes the visual and linguistic signs of our wrecked on the verge of destruction appear together, which is no longer guided by the original intentions of the poster makers, either in its appearance or its meaning” - János Géczi interprets his work.
Monika Wagner, discussing the typical artist's use of materials in modernity, writes: "the introduction of everyday objects into the realm of art has fundamentally altered ideas about art and artistic creation and has shattered the canon of art-worthy materials". The first generation of decollage was desperately searching for a link between art and everyday life. For them, the damaged poster was both a social document and a textural work of art with qualities akin to abstract expressionism. Their vandal poster art is dominated by a revulsion against the new democratic convenience of wealth. János Géczi is no stranger to this mentality: irony about the greasy hedonism of consumption dominates many of his works. However, what is more important to him in these reliefs with their particular colour and plasticity is the temporal quality, the ruinousness, the passing away that shapes the material and the life that transforms the artefact.
János Géczi (1954) poet, writer, visual artist, newspaper editor, university lecturer, cultural historian, doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences - his multifaceted work cannot be confined to one field of science or art. He has spent most of his life in Veszprém. immu Pets exhibition is a comprehensive and unique presentation of his decollages from the past years.
The exhibited works are related to the surroundings of Balatonalmádi and Veszprém, Rome (Italy), Kishegyes (Serbia) and Murter (Croatia) and were created between 2019 and 2023.
Exhibition curator: art historian András Bán
On view: 12 April - 14 May 2023
The programme is supported by the VEB2023 Veszprém-Balaton European Capital of Culture and the Municipality of Veszprém City with County Rights.
