OVER THE COUNTER
Economy in Post-Socialist Art
AN EXHIBITION OF HUNGARIAN AND INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ART
MÜCSARNOK / KUNSTHALLE
2010
June 18 – September 19, 2010
OPENING: 17 JUNE 19H
MateiBejenaru, ImreBukta,MirceaCantor,OlgaChernyshewa, AnettaMonaChisa
& Lucia Tkacova, István Csákány, Miklós Erhardt, Andreas Fogarasi, Kristina
Incˇiu]raite˙, Tamás Kaszás, Zsolt Keserue,Margareta Kren, Johanna Kandl, Yuri
Leiderman, Kristina Leko, AnnaMolska, Deimantas Narkevicius, Csaba Nemes,
LuciaNimcova, Uriel Orlow, Krsto Papiæ, Dan Perjovschi, Reinigunggesellschaft,
REP, Katerina Seda, Societé Realiste,Mladen Stilinoviæ, Lukasz Skapski, Kamen
Stojanov, Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor, Clemens von Wedemeyer
CURATORS: ESZTER LÁZÁR AND ZSOLT PETRÁNYI
“We know that art is not an ideal of beauty that is outside the rule of social law,
but amanifestation of life that is determined by the other forces of the age,
and derives from, as well as acts upon, our everyday lives. The social and
political crises of the age have consequently never been independent fromthe
crises art has experienced. There is, however, a short delay between the two.”
( L A J O S K A S S Á K : A K O R S Z E R Û M Û V É S Z E T É L , 1 9 2 5 )
The exhibition called Over the Counter has been inspired by the economic illusions,
utopias, creativity and frustration that Central Europe has been home to
recently, and ismade relevant by the global economic crisis which began in 2008,
and which can be looked upon as a negative critique of the process of adopting
the capitalist order. The title of the exhibition refers to different work progresses
going on in the service sector, and beyond this to the position of artists in the
production. Eitherwe take the „effective” evasion of certain rules, or the crossings
of different economical processes, we find the product on the counter, and this
is the very thing to which we can relate. The English version of the title stands
for a quasi informal or directmarket that avoids stockmarket. Also it canmean
non-prescriptionmedicine – in the case of the exhibition we would like to state
the flexibility of economical processes and the existence of an out-of-control
but operable mechanism. The exhibit offers an opportunity to look for artistic
practices that thematize such social conditions that result from the economic
changes of the past few decades, or bear testimony to outlooks that root in artistic
attitudes towards these changes.
In 1989 the socialist countries entered what came to be called the transition
period. Politically, itmeant the adoption of democratic institutions, while economically
it was a transition from socialism to market economy, the institutions
of a neoliberal capitalist system. Currently, the post-socialist countries
are experiencing a double crisis: one the one hand, the transitional model envisaged
twenty years ago seems to be unsuccessful, and on the other, the region
has still not reached the level of western modernity. The idea of communism
can be considered a radical version of modernism, which may have failed but still
presents a cultural and social challenge when it comes to reinterpreting, reforming
or replacing the institutional and behavioural ideals it proposed. Art,
a branch of the entertainment industry, is put into a difficult position by the current
crisis as the new investment interests have made it something of a luxury article.
The exhibition features artist, fenomenons, problems from all over the region, from
the Czech Republic to Armenia, from Lithuania to the former Yugoslavia, artists
who redraw the political map of Eastern Europe: these are not the eastern
outposts of the European Union, but a territory where survival and prosperity do
not follow the western models, but was predestinated to go on a different way.
H-1146 Budapest, Dózsa György út 37.
www.mucsarnok.hu • www.kunsthalle.hu
Open daily: 10.00 a.m. – 6.00 p.m., on Thursday
12.00 a.m. – 8.00 p.m., closed on Monday