Techniques of Evasion

The exhibition Techniques of Evasion presents a selection from the collection of the Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art Budapest, based on the works of Hungarian artists of the 1960s and ’70s. The display focuses on the artistic positions that were not only pushing at the conventional aesthetic boundaries, but also queried the social and political establishment of the authoritarian state.

The Hungarian neo-avant-garde movement was exemplary of its rule braking techniques and strategies, having been able to formulate various types of opposition to the system. The main tools of the conceptual, photo-based works: the body, the language and the street/nature can be seen as “techniques of evasion” emerged under the conditions of censorship, surveillance and the restriction of freedom. Experiencing such dichotomies as official and unofficial, permitted and prohibited, public and private, conformity and nonconformity, artists often created new dimensions of reality: parallel worlds, utopias, dystopias and imaginary domains. The methods of the artists represented in the exhibition are ranging from the subversive appropriation of objects, symbols, ideologies (cobblestone, sickle and hammer, five-pointed star, May Day parade) to the critique of the bureaucratic structures of the regime, and the mocking of power by revealing its dysfunctionality or triviality.

A common feature of the subversive practices employed by the artists on display is that they have contributed to the creation of freer manifestations of art and showed how to critically think, create and live in the narrow confines of a power-based system.

The exhibition is realised in collabaration with Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, Hungarian Academy of Rome and Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art Budapest.

Exhibiting artists:
Gábor Attalai, András Baranyay, László Beke, Tibor Csiky, Orsolya Drozdik, Ferenc Ficzek, György Galántai, István Gellér B., Gyula Gulyas, Tibor Hajas, Károly Halász, László Haris, Zsigmond Károlyi, Judit Kele, Katalin Ladik, László Lakner, Dóra Maurer, Gyula Pauer, Sándor Pinczehelyi, Tamás Szentjóby, Kálmán Szijártó, Lenke Szilágyi, Bálint Szombathy, Endre Tót

Curators: Giuseppe Garrera, József Készman, Viktória Popovics, Sebastiano Triulzi

Promoted by
Rome the Capital City – Department for Cultural Growth
Azienda Speciale Palaexpo
National Cultural Fund of Hungary
Hungarian Academy of Rome

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Press contact:
Gabriella Rothman, rothman.gabriella [​at​] ludwigmuseum.hu
Maria Giulia Pavin, mg.pavin [​at​] palaexpo.it