It seems nothing can interfere with the continuity of day to day exhibition administration. There are no holidays during normal operations, artists create works, periodicals are published and everybody organises their next exhibitions as if duty bound. This time the holders of the Derkovits scholarship exhibited their works of art in the Ernst Museum in the frame of the Art Scholarship Holders’ Festival. If the organisers of the festival say that the Derkovits scholarship has traditions, it rather means here that it has a rugged past and an uncertain future. Its present is incomprehensible and dismal, although this may be the nature of the given present always. The term ”wide range” has become the call of times lately, that is give the opportunity to all, so that when you have seen it all, you can establish definitively the location of real art. A peculiar consequence of the misinterpretation of ”anything goes” is that the measure of quality can be nothing else, but the demands artists have with respect to themselves. If you look at the exhibition from this aspect, you will find out how different the standards are. Some search for their potential public among the customers of Hungarian public statues or some could become excellent applied graphic artists (Sebestyén Monori, László Dinea). Some have international prospects (Lakner, Szacsvay, Szépfalvi, Szegedy-Maszák, Eperjesi, Havas), while others have only done the minimum (András Braun, Péter Császár), or tried to do their best, but to no effect (Boldizsár Kő, Ábel Szabó, Áron Balázs among others). Since we had the chance to see the majority of the works earlier and most young, full-fledged Hungarian artists look for real challenges in other areas, there are neither surprises nor new approaches.
If you were to choose a work that makes you find the Derkovits scholarship worth maintaining beyond sheer subsistence purposes, then that is the work of Tibor Gyenis. His installation is a series of photographs entitled Fuji Reala 100, which is well thought out, implemented well according to the possibilities and is sensitive to current issues. It is not over-serious, incomprehensible or perfunctory. It is not a one-shot, unrepeatable piece at the apogee of a career, but a work simply open to further reflection and sequence.
Exploring the limits and reality of his body and environment, Gyenis imagines possible (or impossible?) systems from which he creates minutely considered pictures. His imagination follows the train of thought of tales. The question ”What would happen if I were cloned?” has the same logic (although more realistic) as the one ”What if a sausage grew on my nose?”. The imagination of Tibor Gyenis couples with a devoted passion for DIY. This is the only way he could produce the muscle replacements, plants recalling the landscaping of the court of Louis XIV and pictures of people leaning at absurd angles defying gravity of earlier years.
Fuji Reala 100 may even increase the tension characteristic of his works, running between photographic manipulation and tricks feasible in reality. If he wants to follow this direction, or the one he started in the series featuring his grandparents, he will inevitably have to face the local limits of technical opportunities for it is difficult to approach the quality of Jeff Wall or Andreas Gursky in this genre even in countries richer than Hungary. Of course, we should not go ahead that much, but be happy that we have found something noteworthy besides the ”normal” operations.