The young and middle-generation artists from Veszprém presents their recent works in a joint exhibition at the House of Arts Veszprém, where most of them started their careers in the visual workshop.
Exhibiting artists:
Ádám Albert, Gábor Áfrány, Zsuzsi Csiszér, Anett Deli, Imre Farkas, Tamás Fuchs, Péter Hatala, László Hegyeshalmi, Marcel Kelemen, Ágota Környei, Tamás Marton, Ábel Péterfy, Péter Somody, Dezső Szabó, István Tarczy, Kata Várszegi, Ágnes Verebics , István Zachar
Opening speech by László Hegyeshalmi:
"All religions, arts and sciences are different branches of the same tree.
The aim of these endeavours is to ennoble man's life, to lift him out of a merely physical existence and lead him to freedom."
ALBERT EINSTEIN
STARTVONAL is the starting point, starting location, starting line. The city of Veszprém from where the exhibitors started.
TIMELINE, a term and tool often used in social media today. In this case, the TIMELINE is 30 plus 30 years, from 1960 to 1990 and 1990 to the present.
Anyone who follows the development and changes in Hungarian art knows exactly what has happened and changed in the last decades, in the last sixty years. What a change in everything, not only in art and not only in our country.
The STARTING LINE exhibition brings together the generation born in the sixties, seventies and eighties. Here we are, then and now, nineteen of us.
Ádám Albert (1975), Gábor Áfrány (1971), Richárd Csik (1980),
Zsuzsi Csiszér (1972), Anett Deli (1981), Imre Farkas (1974),
Tamás Fuchs (1962), Péter Hatala (1983), László Hegyeshalmi (1953),
Marcel Kelemen (1964), Ágota Környei (1965), Tamás Marton (1966),
Ábel Péterfy (1976), Péter Somody (1963), Dezső Szabó (1967),
István Tarczy (1971), István Zachar (1975), Kata Várszegi (1976 ),
Ágnes Verebics (1982)
Thirteen artists were born in Veszprém. Currently, ten artists live and work in Veszprém, including those from the surrounding area.
Five artists have worked/are working in the House of Arts, Veszprém. Eleven artists teach and educate to a high standard, representing continuity, passing on their knowledge, professional and human experience to the generations that follow them.
What is the organizing force and concept behind the STARTING LINE exhibition, which brings together nineteen artists of different ages and with different artistic agendas?
The cohesion, the organizing force in this case is QUALITY, the city of Veszprém, the HOUSE OF ART, the Veszprém Visual Workshop, W:I:M, founded thirty-seven years ago. Belonging to this PLACE, this workshop, the homeliness (the spirit of the place, the shared experiences, the city, the hometown). Some shared experience/memory. Cohesiveness, respect for each other, curiosity, listening, learning. Togetherness (leaving and returning), friendship (support, help).
If you look carefully at the exhibition, you can see the different paths, the different media, the diversity.
There is the tradition of painting, recycling, collage and repainting, print, photo-based visual art, media art, computer-generated moving image, photography, biomorphic research and the conversion of observation into vision - as well as true "naturalistic" art, space installations of soft sculptures, painting, gluing, printing, sewing.
A variety of substrates and techniques: canvas, paper, vinyl, aluminium, oil, acrylic, watercolour, textile...
Very rich meanings. Fluctuates with many meanings.
ART meets SCIENCE (biology, physics, chemistry, geometry, computer science...)
"Art can only be great if it is directly connected with cosmic laws and subordinates itself to them. We feel these laws unconsciously if we approach nature not from outside but from within: we must not only see nature, we must experience it." (1938)
Vaszilij Kandinszkij
STARTING LINE is an exhibition organized on a non-stylistic and non-generational basis.
As described above, talent, quality and excellence are the main driving forces. The fact that I have taught the vast majority of the exhibitors can also be a link. I used to say that I did not act as a "teacher", I did not want to create a dependency relationship. Perhaps I was a "mentor" to the students. We didn't progress through compulsory lessons, but we came up with tasks, posed problems, and found solutions individually or collectively. We have learnt most from each other and that is still the case today. We followed the principle of learning by doing.
We have been on an instinctive and conscious path of CREATION and SEEING.
We have sought to understand the practice and theory of CREATION-SEEING. Its philosophy, psychology, physiology, beauty. Its whole complex cognitive system. Together we discovered and understood how vision, "thinking" vision, can be learned and developed.
Our works deal with the problem of seeing and being seen. The VISUAL WORKSHOP students included those who were not preparing for a career as artists, but were trying out their creative skills and learning how to receive art. They became the "professional" audience, the interested and understanding audience. We often forget that we are all spectators and some of us are both creators and spectators.
René Descartes, who distinguished between the sight of the eye and the insight of the mind, wrote:
"What I thought I saw with my eyes, I grasped by the judgment of my mind alone."
A revolution in painting, a revolution in vision. You could say that abstract painting was a fundamental change in the way painting was seen. Painting no longer seeks to be a representation (an imperfect copy) of the visible world.
ABSTRACT vs. CONCRETE
"Concrete, not abstract painting, because nothing is more concrete, more real than a line, a colour, a surface."
"Is a woman, a tree or a cow on the canvas a concrete element? No. A woman, a tree, a cow is concrete in nature, but in painting it is abstract, illusory, vague, speculative; a surface, on the other hand, is a surface, a line is a line, nothing more, nothing less."
Theo van Doesburg (1930, in the magazine Art Concret)
The STARTING LINE exhibition was curated by Gábor Áfrány and presented the work of artists from Veszprém in the year of the European Capital of Culture 2023.
It is important to say that, in addition to the artists featured in this exhibition, many others have started their career in Veszprém and many others are also working in the city.
Furthermore, it was not the aim of this exhibition to present the full range of different visual genres and artists - e.g. architecture, design, design, visual environment design, photography, film...
A book would be the most suitable form to present this completeness, in which we could present the art of Veszprém of the last more than one hundred years. This work could be followed by a major exhibition(s).
The task is given, because this is a story worth telling and showing for present and future generations.
László Hegyeshalmi
