The exhibition, whose curator is Oliva Maria Rubia, comes to Budapest after showing in Madrid and Berlin. It is organised, more or less, around the techniques Moholy-Nagy used: painting, photography, film, works made with light and set design. At first glance, it appears the curator has taken a conservative approach to showing the artist?s life work: there is little explanation of the types of art and techniques, and Moholy-Nagy?s contemporaries are missing, as is his strong influence on them. A biography of the artist is to be found only in the last room of the exhibition.
But as one moves through the show, it becomes evident with what wisdom Rubio has put the work together. The exhibition follows Moholy-Nagy?s own teachings that the person of the artist should be placed in the background, allowing the work to stand by itself. This forces the viewer to use his or her own experience and openness to determine what is extraordinary about the visions that created these collages, photographs and films. This is what Moholy-Nagy strived for as a teacher and a designer: to see the difference, that which is unique; not to reproduce reality, but to create it.
The exhibition does not show us an artist, but an outlook, a chance to rediscover the principles of order in the world and, with the help of modern techniques, to bring forth from the immaterial realms a different, personally experienced picture.
?László Moholy-Nagy. The Art of Light? runs from June 9 until September 25, 2011.
Author: Eszter Götz
Photos: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
