Interval: The Gallery

Attila Menesi, Csaba Nemes, Katarina Sevic

Curator: Judit ANGEL Dorottya Gallery, which closed last summer, reopens its doors in May – though not according to the original plans. Regrettably, the modernization of the entire building, which would have involved reconstruction works on the gallery, were put on hold when the management rights of the property were handed over to the local council. Műcsarnok is allowed to use the exhibition space until the end of the year, beyond which the future is uncertain.

The gallery’s 2009 exhibition programme reflects on this situation, the unpredictability of what lies ahead. We want to make a sensible use of this interim period, and influence in the act the future of the gallery. The five exhibitions and the side events are centred around five sets of ideas. These are respectively the present and the memory of the gallery; dreams, ideals and plans; the relationship of art and audience; design and art; and the resources of progress. What with the characteristics of the gallery, we do not seek to exhaust the potentials of the subjects, but indicate or throw some light on each through particular examples and viewpoints.

The first exhibition concentrates on the gallery itself. With his project, Attila Menesi attempts to contextualize the gallery through references to those economic, political and cultural parameters that define its present and may influence its future. Katarina Sevic is interested in the memory of an exhibition space that has been functional since the mid-1950s, or more precisely, in her own relationship to an era that is still vivid in the consciousness of the community, but of which she has no first-hand experience. Commissioned by the curator, Csaba Nemes will paint a portrait of the gallery. The gesture, which applies the problems of history painting to the present, is a salute to the gallery as a relic of institutional history. The public display of the portrait, however, will not be the end of the project: what happens to the painting will be decided in the light of the turn the gallery’s fate will take.