Imre BUKTA

ANOTHER HUNGARY

VERNISSAGE: 10 November 2012, 17.00
Szilárd BORBÉLY poet
Mihály DRESCH's concert

Curator: Gábor GULYÁS Imre Bukta’s thematic exhibition combines new installations and board paintings with the former, emblematic works of his oeuvre. The exhibited works focus on such issues as the transformation of traditions, the alienation of nature, the decay of built heritage, the crisis of moral values, and the often desperate, day to day struggles of socially marginalized people. Bukta’s artistic vehicles include well-definable, figurative motifs of painting and graphics, as well as applied objects: harvested crops, pumpkins, corn stalks, a tree stump, chain saws used for wood-cutting, a hog knife or a battered kitchen table. While his older, mostly conceptualist works – shaped by wry irony – are usually intimately connected to the world of land and agriculture, his new works show a strong existentialist stance that represents fundamental issues of human existence in a more general perspective. This shift in Bukta’s art seems to be closely related to the recent intensification of a more melancholic view and the foregrounding of the sacred in his work. His new pictures often construct the fictional view of a fragmented world of splinters and bubbles with vibrant colours, thus creating artworks of multiple perspectives and intricate structures, yet works endowed with unambiguous significance. Similarly, his video-installations, placed within spaces that simulate reality, are more and more poetic: these works address the sometimes banal, sometimes fundamental questions of life in the easily understandable visual language of cinematic sequences. The exhibition ”Another Hungary” is the largest exhibition of the artist in Hungary so far.

Imre Bukta (1952) is a Munkácsy-Prize winner artist of merit. He started his career in his home village, Mezőszemere and in Leninváros (today: Tiszaújváros). However, soon he moved to Szentendre, where he joined the work at Vajda Lajos Stúdió. His first solo exhibition was held in Budapest in 1978; since that time he has been continuously present at both domestic and international exhibitions. Among other prestigious art fairs, he has participated at the Venice Biennale three times, and exhibited at the Biennales of Paris and Sao Paulo. His works are present in several public collections both in Hungary and abroad. In 2008 a retrospective exhibition of his work was held in MODEM, Debrecen. His work was recognized with many awards and honours. He teaches at the visual arts department of Eszterházy Károly College in Eger and at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest.


Supported by: Ministry of Human resources, National Cultural Fund, UniCredit Bank, Ordex, Papp Zoli Borai a Somlóról, Hargita Gyöngye

Media supporters:
Ringier, Népszabadság, HVG, Heti Válasz Online