Eureka!

Műcsarnok – autumn/winter

Legend says that Archimedes exclaimed this famous word when he discovered one of the basic laws of physics. Eureka is since then used to celebrate discoveries and inventions.

Hungarian novelist Mór Jókai in his Novel of the Next Century builds a utopian world around the discovery of a new material, the ichor, endowed with limitless possibilities. The hero of the novel makes a fantastic glass and all kinds of mechanical equipment out of this material. Today’s scientific discoveries have long ceased to be such unique events. They come about through the concerted efforts of scientific teams that build on the results of other teams. Art, on the other hand, remained in touch with the ancient cathartic experience of discovery and invention.

Four new exhibitions will open in the Műcsarnok this autumn under the collective title „Eureka!”

The oeuvre of Nicolas Schöffer, the magician of light, intimating the Future with a capital F, is discovery itself. His famous cyber-sculptures are radiotowers that both emit and receive signals. We celebrate his light-art in the international year of light but there is more to Schöffer than light: theatre and stage dance, urban and architectural planning was also on his inventive palette.

The scheme of art collector Ákos Vörösváry is discovery in two ways. First, he discovers hidden treasures and, second, as an exhibition curator discovers hidden connections between different works of art. He finds an adequate place for the withering objects of folk art among the artifacts of higher culture through his poetico-spatial visions.

Both as a sculptor and as a creator of a uniquely original theatre which mobilizes forgotten ancient values, István Malgot was searching for and discovered the magic of Pygmalion in plastic art. Rarely has there been a Hungarian artist to produce such an evenly and equally high quality work in many different fields as the exceptional István Malgot.

Lajos Csertő dreamed up technical novelties and new ecological systems. In his person the callings of a visionary are combined with the practicalities of moulding and executing sculptures. His water management megaproject is a gigantic vision of land art.

According to the Swiss architect-sculptor, Peter Zumthor, designing a work of art is always a discovery. The collective exhibition entitled „Eureka!” in the Műcsarnok charts the multifaceted senses of discovery, of utopia and of miracle through four exhibitions that present four exceptional artists and four outstanding approaches to reality and to its limits, to knowledge and to how one can overstep the impossible.

Eureka!
Schöffer – 30 October 2015 – 31 January 2016
The ladder. Installations by Ákos Vörösváry
Malgot, the sculptor
In the workshop of Lajos Csertő – 4 November 2015 – 31 January 2016