Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art

LUDWIG MUSEUM

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

Photo: József Rosta / Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art

Until 31 December 2022 TIME MACHINE. A NEW SELECTION FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE LUDWIG MUSEUM

The time machine is a device existing, as of yet, only in theory that can whisk our physical selves into the past or the future. The new exhibition at the Ludwig Museum is not about the possibilities of time travel familiar from science fiction, but instead examines the relationship between time and art from different perspectives, and sees the works themselves as time machines that allow us to travel in our minds. From the museum’s collection of some 800 pieces, we have selected works that reveal different aspects of personal, artistic and historical time from the curator’s personal point of view. The exhibition is introduced by works related to time, the passage of time and notable dates. It then goes on to provide a glimpse into individual destinies and family stories, and the unique history of Central and Eastern Europe, through family photos and diaries. With these works serving as documents, we can learn about the history of the recent past, what daily life was like then, and the turning points that emerged, including the regime change in Eastern Europe and its connections to the historical avant-garde. It’s also a chance to think about the fate of the monuments erected during that period and the connections between art, society and politics. We also address the issues of social utopias and their failures, revolution and war, as well as literary utopias and inspirations, slogans and concepts.

Tracey Snelling Lost Year Motel (detail), 2020 mixed media sculpture with video 70 x 127 x 70 cm Courtest of Studio la Città, Verona

Until 15 January 2023 SMALLER WORLDS. DIORAMA IN CONTEMPORARY ART

Is it a bazaar attraction, an instrument for scientific demonstrations, a children’s toy or a therapeutic device? Originally developed as a clever pictorial play of light on the boundary between the arts and the entertainment industry, the diorama has been a popular illustrative tool in natural history museums since the early 20th century. This presentation format, which combines painting, scenic solutions and optical illusions, is intended to illustrate a result or theory emerging from the national sciences or anthropology for laypersons as an immersive installation in a delimited box space, creating the illusion of reality. Although the diorama appears in all forms of art, it remains a rarely discussed concept. While the exhibition was designed to be understandable and even entertaining for casual viewers, it also delves into the diorama as a genre and its role in art history from a professional point of view, pointing out psychological processes, often unconscious ones, that can become more conspicuous through dioramas. In addition to physical ones, there will also be virtual, digital and video dioramas on display. No exhibition on this scale, presenting the subject as a fine arts genre, has ever been mounted in Hungary. With Hungarian, American, English, Dutch, Polish, German, Slovak, and Trinidadian artists among the exhibitors, the Ludwig Museum will become a pioneer in the art-psychologicalphilosophical presentation of this genre.

Zsófia Keresztes: After Dreams: I dare to Defy the Damage (detail), Photo: Dávid Biró

16 December 2022 – 26 February 2023 ZSÓFIA KERESZTES: AFTER DREAMS: I DARE TO DEFY THE DAMAGE

EXHIBITION FROM THE HUNGARIAN PAVILION OF THE 59TH VENICE BIENNALE OF FINE ARTS

After the end of the Venice Biennale of Fine Arts, it is traditional for us to also present the Hungarian material displayed there here in Budapest. The exhibition by sculptor Zsófia Keresztes, which was highly acclaimed in Venice, deals with the stages of one’s search for identity. Her amorphous sculptures and body fragments created with a mosaic technique are assembled into a large-scale installation, which in four large units shows the ambivalent relationship between the past and the present and the stages of the subject’s self-identification and identity mapping. The concept behind the exhibition goes back to Arthur Schopenhauer’s hedgehog’s dilemma and its connection to a previous exhibition by the artist. The metaphor employed by the philosopher is intended to express the nature of intimacy. As social beings, people are incapable of living alone, so we are constantly looking for others with whom we can share our thoughts, feelings and love, but closeness also brings injuries and wounds. Taking Schopenhauer’s thought process a step further, Keresztes used a scene from Antal Szerb’s novel Journey by Moonlight as the associative starting point for her Venice exhibition. On his honeymoon in Italy, the protagonist of the story arrives in Ravenna from Venice and sets off to explore the mosaics alone in order to reminisce about his childhood. The hedgehog’s dilemma fits into the plot of the novel perfectly: the memories of former cultures make the protagonist realize not only that the individual derives his identity from his own socio-cultural determinants, but also that his present is inevitably built on fragments of the past. Without paraphrasing the plot of the novel, the exhibition uses the mystical experience of the character’s encounter with the mosaics as a poetic analogy: the moment of discovery when the experience of completeness is exploded and the world view that was believed to be solid is called into question. At the same time, through doubt, one can gain the ability to face one’s ever-changing self.

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