“Things have a life of their own, they only need to awaken their souls.”
(Gabriel García Márquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude)
The original idea for the exhibition was inspired by the memory of the quarantine, which lasted for several months in 2021, and then was lifted. How the confinement transformed man’s Lifeworld and influenced his relationship with his environment, such as nature, home and material culture, and how it redefined the notion of home and the experience of home.
In the gallery space, transformed into an apartment, everyday objects – telephone set, curtains, seats – seem grotesquely removed from reality: Katalin Kortmann Járay’s meticulously sculpted objects made of reinforced concrete or clay appear as mystical, fairytale-like anthropomorphic creatures, which are both familiar and alienating. Through playing with dimensions, enlarging and shrinking, distorting, abstracting and transforming, the objects and natural creatures (moth, cobweb, mould) retain only their main character traits.
For Karina Mendreczky, everyday objects such as quilts, carpets and wall hangings carry the idea of the matriarchal family. The objects, made by the artist with her own hands, represent the burden and beauty of needlework, traditional materials and methods (inherited knowledge).
Starting from the concept of home, Sára Gink uses personal memories and internal representations of space to illustrate how the individual is able to perceive, appreciate and structure the world around her. How far she can move from the refuge that is the origin.
Psychology refers to objects that continue to provide a sense of security for children in the process of separation from their mothers as transitional objects.
Dulling the sense of insecurity and vulnerability associated with the traumas of our times (awareness of illness, war, climate anxiety, energy crisis) through nostalgia or an alternative/online reality that is supposedly predictable and controllable can be seen as a coping strategy. However, these emotionally distanced perceptions of reality can lead to the fragmentation of the psyche and, thus, to the erosion of inner landscapes.
The exhibition is the winner of the first Curatorial Award by the Erika Deak Gallery in 2021.