Panorama

Participating artists: AES+F, Balázs Beöthy, Walter Ebenhofer, Tibor Kárpáti, Csaba Nemes, Tamás Zádor 

16. September  - 13.November  2010.

Though, the word 'panorama' is mainly used for describing the wide perspective of a picture, it's meaning is multiple both in the context of the artfield and the everyday. On the one hand it is the title of the still ongoing, Hungarian public service broadcasting television's foreign policy programme, which goes back to the socialist era, on the other hand as tourist attractions. And the pictures wich were defined earlier with this term 'panorama pictures' evolved usually through digital manipulations.

On the field of the fine arts this special picture format is looking back to a great history, due to the fact that they are well known as linear presentations of important historical moments (for example crucial battles) in idealized, heoric way, besides they can be seen as utopical representations of the national identity and also can be seen as landscape representations as well.

The panorama as topic seems to be still relevant in contemporary art in international and national scene, due to the possibility of its multiple interpretation. Contemporary artists work with the original form of the first panorama pictures, but with their choosen topics they refer to actual, contemporary issues, because of the last years evolved ecological, economical and political changes, wich inspired several artworks both in the national and international art scene. They also often use this form as an ironical paraphrase.

Balázs Beöthy's 'This Song is about Nothing' installation refers to the change in the lifestyle as a consequence of the socialist era's housing projects in a poetic way, while in the context of reality and desire trying to remind us of those indian films, which were popular in that time.

The panorama picture – a painting from 2008 - of Csaba Nemes represents an observation car which shows the sequence still pictures of Budapest's streets, but which becomes ironically a victim of itself, the topic of its own position.

Using the bitmap-computer pictures' way of representation, the series of Tibor Kárpáti is reflecting on social phenomenas with mapping specific places from a bird-eye view of Budapest.

Tamás Zádor's panorama photowork was made on the funeral of the gypsy-murders two victims in March of 2009 in Tatárszentgyörgy, which reflects to the most intensive problem of the contemporary Hungarian society. Into the traditional local topic of the panorama pictures - an utopia of a nation's development - he puts the vision of the death of the nation and the questions of the possibilities and the need of forgiveness and regret. His new works show a greater horizont: with picturing the entertaining habits of the Ruhr Area's working class inhabitants he is questioning the perspective of the welfare state, while with another work made on a wedding held in a French castle he confronts us with the issues of colonialization in the region of the Atlantic.

In the international art scene it isn’t rare to deal with the panorama proposition.

 The exhibition represents panorama works of two international artist/artist groups: the work of the russian group AES+F picture future visions in a Wagnerian way, while the look out tower photo series of the Austrian Walter Ebenhofer is more connected to local traditions, which faces us the ironical way of our perspectives. He kept one of the original functions of panorama pictures: based on social problems he reflects on processes of the past, present and the future, but not with a patetic way, rather with solidarity and irony.

Supported by:

               nka

Nemzeti Kulturális Alap