In the latest pieces of Andreas Fogarasi’s series titled Envelop, we see graphic works from the sixties engaging the themes of the Hungarian Workers’ Movement – enclosed in folded copper envelopes. The showcased works from the Kádár Era – by Gyula Hincz and Károly
Raszler, among others – reframed the past for the purposes of propaganda by capturing protests from the first half of the century. By
creating the illusion of continuity, they incorporated the (then-)present – the image of young protestors against the Vietnam War. The
prints themselves, which share as their common denominator the representation of the masses and the movement, are placed in a
universal framework: the great traditions of art history are just as much behind these compositions as the formidable tradition of
revolutions, rewritten by the Bolsheviks. Fogarasi’s series utilises the structure of the envelope as his image carrier; the form of the
envelope, used since the 19th century, simultaneously alludes to the possibilities of concealment and opening. As a result of its standardised
format, geometric forms and mechanised manufacture, it could even be regarded as a metaphor for a modern day utopia. Fogarasi frames
these graphic works, formally intended for the purpose of aesthetic or ideological education, in variously sized, hand-folded copper
containers. His gesture invokes the past position of graphic artists, along with their ideas and relationships, in the present time; the oncecomplicated
dilemmas of mission and conviction, compliance and artistic freedom are still current.
Christian Kosmas Mayer’s carved pine trunks were unearthed in 2012, after the demolishing process of Berlin’s Palast der Republik, a
symbolic building of the GDR, erected in the seventies. They were originally submerged in the swampy soil 300 years prior, supporting the
enormous structure of the Prussian Berlin Palace that once stood there. Mayer purchased some of these now functionless supporting
elements at an auction. Based on photos of the Atlas figures that were once adorning the ornate stairwell of the palace, he had the
sculpture details carved into the pillars in a smaller, rougher form. The memory of the enormous figures, in this way, is closely linked to the
history of the urban palace that was blown up in 1950, and recently partly reconstructed as a museum – and, in a more general sense,
with the erasability and rewritability of memory. With his carved wooden pillars, the aim of the artist – who simultaneously appears in the
role of the purchaser and the commissioner of the work – is not so much to commemorate an important historical event with his negative
obelisks, but to memorialise an erased and disappearing past, emerging to the surface in ever newer forms. The metamorphoses of the
representational patterns of past systems become especially timely today in cases where the powers that be, assuming a specific
perspective of the past, dress their new buildings in “old clothes” and use them as tools for politicising history.
The examination of the morphology of the past and present constitutes a basic element of both Fogarasi and Mayers’ art practice. In
works by the latter artist, history and the present appear to layer on top of one another almost like a frottage, where, with every
subsequent copy, the original sign and the information contained therein are transformed. In this way, the process of creation is rendered
visible. Andreas Fogarasi primarily focuses on the internal mechanisms of culture. He lifts images that seemingly lost their significance out of
oblivion. He zooms in on city structures and buildings, which, with time, lose their original meaning. The works of both artists share the
element of preservation and the strategy of reprocessing, an examination of the relationship between creativity and power, and the raising
of awareness about entropy, which can also be experienced in culture. In a world that is falling apart, Fogarasi and Mayer seek the
possibility of slowing down and of intermediate positions – between a fixed vantage point and shifting perspectives, accidental discoveries
and methodical research, dismantling and construction. Their present exhibition, which takes details that have been buried or forgotten
and uses them as a starting point, explores such general concept pairs as concealment and visibility, erasure and rewriting, or the
disappearance and preservation of knowledge. Both artists are interested in the invisible structures of, for instance, power or time, as well
as in the mutability or constancy of frameworks and supporting elements – and, by taking these as a premise, the intersection of the past
and present.
József Mélyi
Courtesy of the artists and Vintage Galéria
Photocredit Dávid Biro