Balázs Antal - László Hatházi
Tigers of the Market
Stúdió Gallery, Budapest
16/09/2009 - 03/10/2009
The Tigers of the Market is not the first debut of the Balázs Antal - László András Hatházi created artist couple, within the confines of the SYAA. The formation which combines the self-supporting activities of the exhibitors came out first in 2007 with the project called Urban Glasshouses. As a continuation of the Houseplants; a complex photo-plant installation was also presented at the Studio Gallery’s 50 days exhibition series in 2008. Balázs Antal (graduated as graphic) and László András Hatházi (graduated as painter) leave behind their conventional genres bravely for the sake of experimentation with the form of installation. The intersection of their art is discoverable in the affinity to the contemporary forms of the ornament, and in the taste of long and meticulous discovering the motives of the Far East. The duo’s mutual works further „least common multiple” have a component like the often appearing ornaments of the oriental shop-windows on László András Hatházi’s paintings, which expose the ways of representation of the painting, while the other component is Balázs Antal’s installation-affinity, which –alike Hatházi– has the same recurrent theme: the tiger. In this way not surprising, that the central element in their present mutual exhibition is also the tiger.
Similar to their above mentioned mutual project named Urban Glasshouses, where in the focus there is a special public space, the stricture of the classical shop-window’s functions, and its spatial shrinkage, in the project Tigers of the Market there is a big accent on the undercover procession. The nowadays already liquidated spaces are in the centre of the artist’s disquisitions –the windows of small shops and the market– which according to the not beleaguered agreement of the present economic system, they represent the out of date ways of consumerism.
The Antal – Hatházi duo was mellowing the base concept of this exhibition for more than one and a half year. Their first idea was, that they change the Józsefváros Market’s nearly completely ruined enamel tigers for their own new tigers, as a gift. But during its realization they had to face, that the liquiditation of Józsefváros Market had gone so far, that the market behind the gate is closed. The open air market had to move to the surrounding market halls. By replying to this complex phenomenon the reconstruction of the market’s iron gate appears in the gallery space, around it the mythical tigers are visible. The tigers, which lost their original function, and which are like properly ruined object trouvé, found object become the central elements of the exhibition. As the appropriation of the market hall’s shape, an installation made from foil and boxes are visible in the gallery-space. An other important element of the aesthetic of the market is the container city, which is created with more than hundreds of coloured and miniatured range of objects. In the exhibition space will be apparent a rolling cooking stand, with an observation-like other function, which would like to reconstruct a Chinese street canteen, in a special form of a tinker installation.
Áron Fenyvesi
Photos here