Unruly Constructions

During the last decade of Socialism in Hungary more and more artists felt a need to ironically and playfully re-interpret the symbols of the system which then was already drawing near to its end. Such an artist was Tamás Király, who at that time was already a well-known representative of the avant-garde fashion on the international scene. At times he gave a Parliament dome-shaped hat with a red star on it, at other times he organised photoshoots in Budapest at the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty to record his black velvet collection recalling the lean forms of the Bauhaus style.

The exhibition wishes initiate a dialogue around those momentums of Király which criticised the system in the 80s. Beside documents which have not been presented in a long while, the exhibition also presents a reconstructed version of the designer’s red star-shaped dress (prepared in 1987).

Among the objects and documents exhibited at the gallery two works of László Rajk, a decisive figure of deconstructive architecture also appear, also from this particular era. The connection between the two oeuvres arises not only from the fact that they worked on visual and costume designes for films near by each other, or as artists of the NA-NE Gallery after the regime change. The geometric dress-statues of Király and the spiky constructions of Rajk both criticise the anomalies of the decaying system by re-interpreting the revolutionary aesthetics of an era.