Bulletin, 1991-1994
CONTENTS, FOREWORD
Contents
The SCCA Network
Katalin Néray: Following the Changes: The Past Five Years of Hungarian Visual Arts
András Zwickl: Five Years
Annual SCCA Exhibitions
Svb Voce
30x30x30
Polyphony
Grant Recipients and Documented Artists 1991-1994
Artists' Biographies
Gábor Bachman
Balázs Beöthy
Block Group
Ágnes Deli
Róza El-Hassan
Péter Forgács
Tamás Gaál
György Galántai
István Gellér B.
Péter Gémes
Pál Gerber
Zsuzsa G.Heller
Tihamér Gyarmathy
Péter Herendi
József Jakovits
Ferenc Jánossy
Gyula Július
Gábor Karátson
Balázs Kicsiny
Tamás Király
István Kovács
Tamás Körösényi
Éva Köves
Ferenc Lantos
Viktor Lois
Tamás Lossonczy
Ilona Lovas
János Megyik
Lóránt Méhes
Sándor Molnár
László Mulasics
Tibor Palkó
Sándor Pinczehelyi
István Regős
Éva Sebők
Ágnes Szabics - Noémi Fábián
Tibor Szalai
Zsuzsa Szenes
Attila Szűcs
Tamás Trombitás
Péter Türk
Péter Ujházi
Újlak Group
Gyula Várnai
Béla Veszelszky
Erzsébet Vojnich
András Wahorn
Gábor Záborszky
List of Grant Recipients 1991-1994
List of Comprehensively Documented Artists
Foreword
In 1990, the Soros Center for Contemporary Arts gave an account of their first five years of work in a nicely illustrated volume. Now, in the tenth year of the Soros Foundation's existence, it seems timely for them to publish a second volume, not only because the Soros Foundation has become fully independent and, as a consequence, has grown considerably in importance, but also because it was during these years that the SCCA became really professional. The Budapest SCCA served as a model for setting up a network of 18 Centers for Contemporary Arts throughout Eastern and Central Europe and in some of the former Soviet republics.
In the past few years, the Budapest Center has become an important, and in terms of general access to information exceptionally important, element of Hungarian art life. While in the previous period - for practical reasons - the most pressing goal was to create a database and set up an information service, the primary tasks now involve the organization of projects, of these the most important being the annual exhibitions. Architectonic Visions Today was the first exhibition which was organized on the basis of a theme conceived by the Center and its Board of Curators. All of us were surprised by the enormous interest and creativity the idea provoked among artists and architects. The subsequent exhibition was much less heterogeneous than Architectonic Visions Today. It was titled Svb Voce and was the first large video-installation show in Hungary. It raised considerable professional interest among foreign artists and art critics: fortunately, Svb Voce took place simultaneously with the presentation of Dutch video-installations, thus the conceptual differences became clearly discernible.
In 1992, the Merlin Theatre and its partner institutions organized the Soros Festival. The Center contributed to the event with the performances of numerous artists, and also with a modest but original idea. All the artists who had received support from the Foundation were given a 30 by 30 centimeter canvas and were asked to create a work for the occasion. There were a few real masterpieces among the works and the Center still has the little collection.
The 1993 Polyphony, the voluminous catalogue of which will soon be published by the Center, and the conference that followed was certainly the most ambitious event organized by the Center so far. Polyphony was not confined to a single venue, but instead it was a series of events which, sometimes unnoticably and sometimes provoking dislike or interest, initiated a dialogue with society, similarly to the way the 42nd Street Project did in New York. The event involved many young artists who had been unknown to the broad public before. Those ideas that did not fit into the structure were also documented and exist now in a conceptual or written form. Polyphony leads us to the question of whether in the period after the change of the political system there also occured a significant change in Hungarian art life. It has become a commonplace to point out how the artists, perfectly aware of the limits and the bondages the previous system imposed upon them (and also aware of the ways to get around them) find their place in democracy, which does not only allow them a total freedom of expression but also casts them into a state of existential and financial destitution. After 1990, both a vacuum and the appearance of a fervent and stirring spiritual-intellectual life prevailed in Hungary. Artists and art institutions chose to follow the tactics of escaping forward. Probably never before had there been so many art and photo exhibitions in Hungary as in the past four years. Apart from individual artists, groups appeared. Installations and performances also flourished. It seemed that after the new movement that dominated painting in the eighties, the spirit of the seventies, always latently present in art, started to prevail again. In the last few years, more events recalled the Fluxus period than ever before.
When allocating grants, the basic philosophy of the Center was to sponsor publications presenting new tendencies or the oeuvre of outstanding artists. The development of the archives of the Center has gradually reached a stage where the data of the mid-career generation of artists are being processed, and a sufficiently wide spectrum is covered to be able to distinguish the turning points and the most influentuial makers of progressive art.
The eternal question is how to go on. One of the novelties of the annual exhibition this year is that, instead of the capital, it will take place in one of the other art centres of the country, Székesfehérvár. The theme is the Volt, electricity as an art medium and the various approaches it makes possible. Hopefully, this high voltage event will stimulate intellectual activity and spiritual excitement.
Katalin Néray