In the 70ies we made photos - Exhibition of András Koncz

The photographs taken by András Koncz in the 70s are at the same time historic documents and works of art belonging to the Hungarian art of the period.
The role of photography in the universal, Central-European and Hungarian art of the 70s was evident, as contemporary books: (Klaus Groh: Aktuelle Kunst in Ost-Europa), and exhibitions: (Expozíció, Hatvan, Lajos Hatvany Museum) testify. But an art historical look back at this subject is rare (Más-kép[A different picture], Budapest, Ernst Museum, 1989, curator Ágnes Gyetvai), and the exploration of it has only just begun in Hungary (Rózsa Presszó, 1998, Ernst Museum, curator Éva Körner). The photographs András Koncz took as an artist setting out on his career, are contemporaneous with the photographs of Ákos Birkás, Zsigmond Károlyi and András Lengyel but, through photography, they are also connected to the conceptual art initiated by non-professional visual artists (Miklós Erdély) and the photographs documenting live art events (Hajas Tibor). (For instance, Koncz also recorded his own ephemeral creations /Line Deflection, Line Transformation, Revaluation of Television/, which by now have acquired a life of their own.)
However, in the mid 1970s, the visual artists just starting out brought about a reduction -in the artistic medium- which resulted in pictures showing nothing else apart from cameras, models, empty studios, artistic locations and themselves and their friends constantly spending time together. This learned and inherited reduction and refusal of art, was a recommencement of art and the photographs document the demand for this, (Holding my work, Self-portrait, Nude). At the same time the movement, time, reflection, light and space problematics offered by photography, (pictures of models, Time in the studio, Self-portait I-III), formed the basis for a new and complex viewpoint of painting which developed later in the 80s.
Katalin Keserü