Ferenc Nemes was not predestined to become a fine artist, but chance (fate?) intervened: his path led him to art. The young man, born in a village along the Danube, studied at the Budapest Woodworking Technical School, where his college teacher was Tibor Csiky (1932-1989), who became an icon of the Hungarian neo-avant-garde in his lifetime.
After his technical school education, he continued his studies in 1968-73 at the Leningrad Forestry Academy, specialising in wood chemistry technology. In 1980, having met his peers with similar artistic principles, he joined the Rend-Rendszer Group, formed by Gábor Heritesz and Tamás Htóth. Already in 1966 he made his first small sculpture, and a year later he started to make prints.
He was interested in the phenomenon of wave motion and its representation in both plane and space. He was also influenced by the works of domestic masters (József Nemes-Lampérth, Béla Fekete-Nagy, Béla Veszelszky, Dezső Korniss, István Harasztÿ, Tamás Hencze, Péter Türk) and foreign artists (Umberto Boccioni, Georges Seurat, Marcel Duchamp, Vieira da Silva, Jesús Rafael Soto, Lyonel Feininger, Piet Mondrian). He became a conscious artist by building from many directions.
As far as his creative method is concerned, he admits that from ’68 onwards he abandoned a conscious approach. As he recently declared the essence of his work. I like to use a grammatical analogy, to formulate sentences in multiple compound sentences, where there is a main clause, subordinate clauses, adverbs, adverbial adverbs. An essential compositional requirement is that the number of variables should be set so that it does not interfere with the understanding of internal relationships.
Csaba Kozák
His comprehensive solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art is not merely a retrospective exhibition that meets the needs of the contemporary art scene, but a significant undertaking as part of a long-term art historical project, which is also important for the curricular positioning of his oeuvre, and is an important product not only for the regional but also for the national professional and public audience, in terms of expanding and differentiating their knowledge and experiences.
The exhibition – from the early poems and collages inspired by Dadaist poetry, to the prints that deal with wave movements, varied plastic and conceptual works, and the latest pieces that experiment with pressing and retouching – provides a medially diverse and valid cross-section of the artist’s oeuvre, pointing out that the artistic significance of Ferenc Nemes’ work goes far beyond the borders of this region.