LÁSZLÓ LAKNER. INFINITUM
29 02 – 19 05 2024
Museum of Modern Art, Navy
Central European painting has long been an underestimated area, which has received only marginal and rather haphazard attention, in the context of a specific author’s work, or with reference to the general tendencies of the Western/global art world. Therefore, the terms New Figuration, photorealism, hyperrealism, and others dominate, while the connection to different media or genres is often suppressed. This is also why pictorial realism, in all its richness and diversity, is seen as a regression.
The project, which draws on the work of a key figure in Hungarian/Central European visual art – László Lakner – suggests exactly the opposite trend. Painting is understood more as a turn, as a certain type of approach to reality, offering an extremely rich apparatus for its reflection. The focus of our attention is thus on cultural and historical connotations, political regimes, everyday practices, and social habitus, but also on the art world’s own tendencies and turns, including media and genre transformations. The medium of painting, to which, after all, even Lakner himself is not limited, is presented here as a starting point for exploring other types of creative practice, especially conceptual art, the auteur book, or film.
What is unique, then, is the attempt to embrace (figurative) painting and the forms of realism of the second half of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st century on a broader Central European scale. This is facilitated by the composition of the author team, the contextualisation of the author’s production (with the help of Hanne Darboven, Milan Knížák, Siegmar Polke, Daniel Pitín, Danuta Urbanowicz, etc.), and the participation of important collection and memory institutions operating in the region. The exhibition is accompanied by an independent monograph prepared in cooperation with the Brno publishing house Stará pošta.
László Lakner (April 15, 1936, Budapest) is one of the important actors of the Hungarian neo-avant-garde, since 1974 he has lived and worked in Berlin. He participated in the legendary exhibitions of the Iparterv group (1968, 1969), the Venice Biennale (1972, 1976, and 1990), and the Kassel Documenta (1977). His oeuvre is quite extensive, ranging from magical realism, inspired by Tibor Csernus, to Thatcherism, Rauschenberg-style combine painting and hyperrealism, to abstract painting and its conceptual approach. An important source of inspiration for him is print media, texts, illustrations, and photographs in newspapers and magazines. He finds themes in history, philosophy, poetics, and world events in general.
Seamstresses Listen to Hitler’s Speech, 1960, oil on canvas, Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest
