Stories We Live With: selection from the Somloi-Spengler collection & MOME students, Q Contemporary Gallery, Budapest, 2nd August 2022

https://qcontemporary.com/exhibitions/current

Very glad that I have finally found this place. The current exhibition has two parts – a smaller one of some photographs from MOME students which are reasonably interesting although nothing outstanding and then, in the main exhibition space (beautifully laid out) items form the Somloi-Spengler collection which, judging by its quality and size, must give the Ludwig’s something of a run for their money.

There are some pictures of what I found to be personal highlights on Facebook but the work was very wide ranging – a couple of marvelous photographs towards the end with a wonderfully misty and mystic quality, a couple of striking brightly-coloured painted images, including a most intriguing/baffling one that showed Putin one side of a Christ figure; could have done with some more commentary about that. But the highlights were two rather grim items. The first were a series of manipulated images of Lidice as a memorial to the massacre of the village after Heydrich’s assassination with the final item being a clear original image that was obviously the basis for a number of the manipulated ones and a blank official document – again, not sure what it was – which was a pity – a Nazi document relating to the events of the time? Who knows. But effective the way the images looked as if they were half-rubbed out but still b=visible, like the people in the village – not there but remembered.

The final and most powerful was a series of photographs of a Lego creation of a concentration camp – a very dark juxtaposition where the mere existence of the images was enough – although for some reason I was expecting to see the actual models. Wonder why only photographs.

Anyway, a great first visit and this place, very conveniently located, is now definitely on my arts radar.

Czigany: Retina Varfok Galeria, Budapest 16th Sept 2022

Marcell Nemeth: Art9 Galeria, BudapestJuly 28th 2022