CIRCLE - retrospective exhibition of Beáta Széchy

This ret­ros­pec­tive ex­hi­bit­ion of the gra­phic ar­tist and pain­ter Beáta Széchy ce­le­b­ra­tes her 55th birth­day, and shows works from the past 25 years. The event is part of the Ernst Mus­e­um's Sum­mer Prog­ram int­ro­du­cing the oeuvre of con­tem­por­ary Hun­ga­ri­an ar­tists, with spe­ci­al re­gard to woman pain­ters, as is the tra­di­ti­on of the mus­e­um.
Beáta Széchy, who is li­ving in the Uni­ted Sta­tes, star­ted as a gra­phic ar­tist but soon she took to using pho­tos and tex­ti­les. While still in Hun­gary, she made works of sewn and pain­ted mul­ti­laye­red paper that often de­pic­ted sce­nes, group photo pa­raph­ras­es, mem­ori­es and stori­es loc­ked up in boxes. From the 1980s on she has been de­sign­ing book art, using exist­ing books for mak­ing sculp­tu­res. Széchy turns books into ob­jects and sculp­tu­res, and uses the book as a sym­bol and me­tap­hor. Also she has been mak­ing ins­tal­la­tions since 1992. Her first ins­tal­la­ti­on tit­led I Ching - The Book of Changes was ins­pi­red by the cul­tu­re of the Far-East (Kala Ins­ti­tu­te, Berke­ley, US).
Széchy gra­du­a­ted 1980 at the Hun­ga­ri­an Col­l­e­ge of Art, and in the late 1980s she moved to the Uni­ted Sta­tes. In 1990 she fo­un­ded the Cen­ter for Hun­ga­ri­an Cul­tu­re in Dal­las to pro­pa­ga­te her home count­ry's cul­tu­re in the US. In the mid-1990s, to­get­her with Ame­ri­can col­le­agues she or­ga­ni­zed a co­lony of ar­tists at Ba­la­ton­fü­red.
This ex­hi­bit­ion shows dra­wings, gra­phic art, paper sculp­tu­res, col­la­ges torn, sewn and woven into squ­a­res, off­set mon­ta­ges, off­set prints made by trans­form­ing old pho­to­gra­phs, screen prints, book ob­jects and ins­tal­la­tions. For the oc­cas­ion of the ex­hi­bit­ion a book about the ar­tist and her works will be pub­lis­hed.