The exhibition's curators, who are themselves two expatriate art historians -- the husband-wife team of Maja and Reuben Fowkes, have put together a show of work by artists who worked in Budapest at some time between the fall of the Iron Curtain and the present, relying on archival research, interviews with members of the Budapest art scene, and organising an international conference at the Ludwig Museum on foreign experience in contemporary art earlier this year.
The exhibition includes videos of Budapest in the 80s by Eike, large-scale doodles by Catherine Bürki of the artist's kitchen, Sanna Härkönen's street scenes, an Adam and Eve constructed of kolbasz by David Wilkinson, photographs of the capital's Kerepesi Cemetery by Claudia Martins and Ninni Wager's red suitcase from which hundreds of faces emerge on sticks.
"The notion of 'revolutionary decadence' stresses the role of individuals and informal sociability in bringing about radical social change in the contemporary era, rather than the usual caste of politicians, celebrities and puritanical guerrillas familiar from the revolutionary history," according to the museum's home page. "The show aims to highlight the contribution of foreign artists to the Hungarian scene in the context of a new 'post-national' understanding of contemporary art."
The exhibition runs from October 15 until November 22, 2009.
Author: Eszter Götz
