Zsuzsi Ujj’s first solo exhibition at acb Gallery presents a diverse and wide-ranging selection of her photographic works, attempting to explore and present the connections and relationships between the series that make up her oeuvre. In this selection and arrangement, attention is also paid to motivic repetitions, to objects (especially the various uses of mirrors or foil), and to the narrative power of alternating close-ups and distant views. In her work, Zsuzsi Ujj, typical of the “new wave” that largely dominated the 1980s, poetry, lyrics, music and visual art form a close unity.
The title of the exhibition and the moving image material between the photographs underline these connections and juxtapose the poetic, vocal and artistic aspects of Zsuzsi Ujj’s work. These areas are bound together by a powerful visual skill, visual expressiveness and the ability to convey melancholic moods, often tinged with ironic, grotesque humour.
In the extremely short and intense period between 1986 and 1991, the artist, who had never received any formal training, created a unique oeuvre of Hungarian photographic art, dealing with female role patterns and experiences, in which she drew on various topos, modes and forms of vulnerability, seduction and self-discovery, and her compositions and gestures saturated various behavioural patterns with new content.