Uncut Version - Positions in paintingin the ERNST Museum!

Curators: József Készman, Zsolt Petrányi At present, painting is the best-known form of contemporary art in Hungary. This is the art form most influenced by fashion and the visual environment, and this is the area where the most varied output meets with the most diverse expectations of collectors and exhibition goers. The display Uncut Version is a challenge even for us: we try to point out those new tendencies and phenomena that may be the markers of the future directions and values of painting. In recent years, the issue most challenged in the profession was the relationship of photography and painting. Very diverse positions have emerged as to what value, technique or realism is; even the very tradition of what is one of the oldest art forms has been redefined time and again. What are the new directions? How to proceed? These were the questions that guided us when we chose the artists to be featured at Uncut Version. The selection, which analyses current trends in the Hungarian painting scene by presenting a lesser-known and little studied field, is in fact our contribution to the ongoing debate. The young and middle-aged painters featured use psychic phenomena, visions, or the indirect representation of the human world, as their starting point. Their work strongly relies on a technique whose focus is not the reproduction of reality but painterliness. The pieces often abandon such traditional materials as oil paint and the canvas, in their search for a representation of the world that values subjective commentary over objective imitation.