The Dialógus, presenting an overall view of contemporary Hungarian painting, was the actual prologue to the series of exhibitions in the scope of which now – as the second in the series – graphic art is being presented. So after many, many years the greatly wished for desire of the community is being realised: the community of artists can appear en mass between the walls of the Műcsarnok, a place that was so distant for many. In this way, perhaps, everyone can feel a little better in the world of art, except for those who were judged out. But maybe those also have reason to feel satisfied who stayed away of their own accord, as in a lucky case the individual value of their work with respect to the huge flow of work that is on show has probably become even more emphasised.
When talking of a flow I primarily mean the uniformity of the method of presentation, in other words the technical circumstance which at a certain level smoothes out and washes together the more than one hundred and fifty works. However, as a result of the determination that in the middle of the determined conditions of placing the originals in the same packaging, computer scanning, enlargement and printing, the works become unified, in many cases a both good and bad result was born, which deprived the works of their no small amount of unique features. Obviously there was not enough time to pay the necessary great deal of attention required during the technical ”transfer” process to attend to every detail and shade in the same way that the artists did, in the knowledge that for them in a single work there are no more important and less important details.
Luckily the exhibitor’s concept does not only have a bad side. There is something beautiful and strong in that only black rules on the huge white walls, in the same rhythm and size. There is a rarely seen order dominant in the disorder of styles, a quality of transparency appears which disjoints the structure of similar mass events. The idea, then, is basically good and interesting, just like the exceptional aspect that the originals of the exhibited collection can be requested. The exhibition takes on a picture storage – an actual file – function where the copies refer to the unseen originals, and as a whole it generates a complex, old and now philosophic field of problems that has existed for a long time in graphic art, the problem of duplication examined by Walter Benjamin.
To the unnamed exhibition almost everyone brings the ”average me” with them, in other words originality is seen at the degree where the known stylistic characteristic features are realised, making identification of the picture easier (naturally only where there is a set style). In this aspect the material shows little that is new, experimentation has no place here. Before everything the points of view of immediate recognition are realised, just like at every group exhibition where you cannot present yourself to the public with more than one single work. As a result of this we meet a mass of iconographic structures fossilised as emblems, which usually refer back to themselves, or to put it another way twisting in themselves they generate subjective fields of strength. It is as if everyone were saying a monologue, there is no real possibility to create a dialogue that counts on completeness nor for the identification of latent language-meaning relationships.
Those in the Hungarian field of graphic art today who intend to draw up lines of strength will not get very far here, because this is simply impossible, even in spite of the good intentions of the organisers. This exhibition is the meeting point of the talented and the not so, of those at the top and the troops, it is not able to give a realistic picture of the momentary situation of the genre, because several top artists rejected the possibility to step before the public. Probably the aim was not for the over all picture that was received to act as the subject of some sort of academic examination and give reason for a deeper art history summary (this suspicion is supported by the lack of the theoretical refinement of the thick catalogue). Because then an invitation aspect should have been applied equivalent to a critical construction somewhat different to the present ”folk-nation” judging criterion.
The general public, of course, is not interested in this. Whoever wanders into the Műcsarnok to relax for an hour and spend some pleasant moments will not be disappointed. The over all picture is light and airy, and there is no sign at all of the soil-boundness that is probably waiting for us at the next event. Namely the review of contemporary sculptors.