Other Lands Are To Come

“Blue, red, yellow poly-daubed
pictures I saw in my dreams,
and I felt: this is the order of things,
not a floating dust-speck’s out of place.
Now gloom-like my dream spreads out to my limbs
and the iron world is the order.
By day a moon rises in me and when it’s night
outside – a sun shines here within.”
Attila József: Consciousness (excerpt) Translated by: Michael Beevor

The Várfok Gallery continues its exhibition programme with a new group exhibition entitled ‘Other Lands Are to Come’. It follows the ‘Extraordinary Artworks in Extraordinary Times’ and ‘The Very Best’ group exhibitions and is the third exhibition in the Gallery to be shown in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The exhibition also makes reference to the ‘Discovering Inner Landscapes’ series of works shown in the open-air exhibition space of the Várfok Gallery which was curated in 2014.

In this  current exhibition, the theme of “inner landscape” is elaborated in an inverse way through discovery of outer landscapes within the interior. As the above quoted verse by Attila József suggests, even in a needle-sharp photograph, such as ‘Economy’ by Akos Czigany, an inner sun lights up.

The title and the theme of the exhibition have been taken from Péter Ujházi’s work of the same title. Ujházi’s collage painting from 2015 is a witty piece from the 80-year-old artist’s planetary series, in which space jumps happen through intertwined funnel-shaped channels. Within one artwork, the viewer moves from grotesque figures and a green planet to abstract distant galaxies. Alongside the playful figures, Ujházi’s characteristic inscriptions – “I’m coming” “I’m going” “UP is here, I am here” – appear around the celestial bodies, intensifying the feeling of movement and travel.

This latest exhibition seeks to connect completely different artistic worlds and landscapes. Together with the stormy, windswept foliage in photographer Péter Korniss‘ work ‘Girl Turning the Hay’ and the thrilling idylls of László Szotyory, inspired by Rococo painter Watteau, one can discover the traces of memory of Françoise Gilot‘s travels to the East, Levente Herman’s foggy fields or the delicate, sign-like plains created with wax by László Mulasics. The exhibition is supplemented with a compendium of beasts in the cabinet room, with the works of Françoise Gilot, Anna Nemes and Máté Orr on show.

Endre Rozsda: Untitled, 1959 oil on canvas, 65×92 cm

One of the most important works of the exhibition is Endre Rozsda‘s very subtle, lyrical work, painted in Paris in 1959, which, in addition to its outstanding artistic qualities, also has an extraordinary history. The painting’s former owner was architect Alain d’Aubigny, who was the model of perhaps one of Rozsda’s most famous portraits, painted in 1941. Alain d’Aubigny was a direct descendant of Lucien Bonaparte (Napoleon’s brother) and the godson of Prince George of Greece and Denmark. This is the first time the painting will have been exhibited in Hungary and it is a great pleasure for the Várfok Gallery to be able to showcase a work of such special intellectual significance to the Hungarian public.

AATOTH FRANYO | CZIGANY AKOS | FRANÇOISE GILOT | HERMAN LEVENTE | KORNISS PÉTER | MULASICS LÁSZLÓ | NEMES ANNA | ORR MÁTÉ | ROZSDA ENDRE | SZIRTES JÁNOS | SZOTYORY LÁSZLÓ | UJHÁZI PÉTER