ANDREAS FOGARASI 

 

Andreas Fogarasi’s works investigate how cultural entities and phenomena can become an image, a brand, and thus marketable identities. In spatial interventions, objects, typographic research, and architectural analysis, he explores the roots and development of communication design, a powerful factor in today’s capitalist economy and politics, as well as the strategies related to various cultural concepts, industrial and economic expectations, and political ideologies and models of representation.

“How can architecture contribute to the representation of political concepts? What could ‘leftist architecture’ be?” These are the questions Fogarasi poses with his work "Displaying a Left" (2001), being shown at Trafó Gallery. Built by Oscar Niemeyer in the 1970s, the Paris communist party headquarters served as a basis for his research. Due to the retro boom of the last few years, the attempt by the French parliamentary left at creating a unique architectural symbol met the common fate of recontextualization. Nevertheless, reaching out for the codes of youth culture seems to have opened up new ways for the Left to strengthen its identity. Authentic 1970s sci-fi elegance and an accompanying leftist aura form a pervasive message that can be read equally well by the diverse audiences of corporate design, fashion, and raves. In addition to presenting these strategies and aesthetics, the work reveals another layer of meaning connected to the present situation by including an article that comments on the actual position, power, and chances of the communist party in France.

Váci utca (continued), 2001,video/DVD, 3'10

 

2008 - Andreas Fogarasi: Információ, May 17 - June 29, 2008

Ernst Museum Budapest is pleased to present a solo show of Andreas Fogarasi.

In 2007, the Hungarian Pavilion of the 52nd Venice Biennial won the Golden Lion Award for Andreas Fogarasi’s project entitled Kultur und Freizeit (Culture and Leisure). The project, curated by Katalin Timár, deals with a phenomenon that currently affects all of Europe: the present situation of cultural centres, which have provided an ever-changing setting for popular culture, and which were once formed along the lines of specific culture-political decisions and ideas. More than anything, the six films – which have not been shot with an expressly documentary approach – raise questions about the current condition of the clubs, cultural centres and community establishments with their colourful past, on the one hand, and regarding their “new” identity and status as well as the possibilities for their functioning in a changing political, economical and cultural space, on the other.

The slow moving images of the videos projected in the “black boxes”, which function both as mini cinemas and sculptural object, show from an emphatically subjective perspective details of the repeatedly altered and rebuilt spaces and their urban environments as well as the state of community centres which have served – and still serve – as social sites for different small communities, professional exchanges, local cultures and various events.

A number of Fogarasi’s works address the question of cultural identification – including the issue of branding – and the visual changes that manifest in its appearance (Public Brands – The Nine States of Austria, 2003; Westen [aka Osten], 2005). Research on typography, communication design, history of architecture and industrial design have always comprised an organic part of his projects. The complex examination of a chosen structure (in architecture/design/history of culture) and its system of symbols usually become the subject of interpretation through the design of the space and the objects of
the installation.

The solo exhibition, entitled "Információ", presents for the first time in Hungary an extensive overview of the artist's work from the past 7-8 years, alongside the "Kultur und Freizeit" project.

Andreas Fogarasi studied architecture at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Between 1997 and 1999 he was a collaborative organiser and student of the Freie Klasse (Free Class). He completed his studies in 2003 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Since 2001, he has been co-editor of dérive – Magazine for Urban Studies. http://www.derive.at

Parc du Trianon, 2002

 

2007 - Kultur und Freizeit (Culture and Leisure)

From June to November 2007 the Hungarian Pavilion of the 52nd Venice Biennale showcases Andreas Fogarasi’s project Kultur und Freizeit (Culture and Leisure) curated by Katalin Timar. The project focuses on cultural peripheries and the separation of the locations of popular culture, a phenomenon affecting and concerning nowadays all Europe.
Andreas Fogarasi (b. 1977), who has already successfully introduced himself in many of the world’s leading international exhibitions and art sites (Manifesta Frankfurt am Main, Palais de Tokyo Paris, Kunstverein Graz, etc), will show his single-channel video series about the present of cultural centres in Budapest in separate black boxes designed exclusively for the Hungarian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale.
Entering these micro-cinemas on the shorter side of the black boxes halved and somewhat diverging viewers take place on the benches and watch 6 videofilms about cultural centres in Budapest, 4 to 12 minutes long each. Rather than being straightforward documentaries these short films focus on the global phenomenon of the survival and isolation of clubs, cultural centres and public spaces on the peripheries of high-culture instead. Fogarasi’s images, slow-motion, emphatically impersonal, loitering on architectural details once considered to be so choice, research the situation of these cultural sites which have slowly become the islands of subcultures, alternative satellite cultures recently. Through their history and role these cultural centres, locations of the democratization of culture centrally controlled and supervised in Hungary would connect to the past political system of the country, internationally though they date back to the 19th century conception of workers’ educational societies. In the shadow of downtown commercial and cultural plazas they have been pressed on the social and cultural peripheries these days.

A Machine for, 2006, Video, 8 min, filmstill

The bilingual catalogue in Hungarian and English which accompanies the exhibition will, apart from providing an analysis of the work itself highlight its social, political and economic aspects as well. See e.g. Sergio Bologna’s contribution on the history of the relationship between work and free time or Jochen Becker’s on the change in the situation of cultural centres in the post-communist era. Equally important is in this respect the question of cultural memory (Péter György) or the transformations of the concept of culture (Zsolt K. Horváth). Potential self-organization in today’s society is a politically and culturally charged issue (Anthony Davies, Stephan Dillemuth, Jakob Jakobsen). The active role the viewer plays in reception has become a focal point of interest for art theory lately (Barbara Steiner).
Some of Andreas Fogarasi’s videos about cultural centres in Budapest have already been presented on exhibitions in Budapest, Vienna and Cologne, see the press clippings below:
“His art is a continuous investigation into existing relations. His creations are not fantasies but analysis: that of architecture and the social, political, cultural and economic problems related to it. (…)
Imprints of past and present, melting in Fogarasi’s work into a didactic, still poetic documentation.” (Die Presse)
“The audience’s experience of Kultur und Freizeit is very precisely dictated: projecting out from the gallery wall is a large, black cube housing a bench and a wooden viewing funnel; once seated inside this peepshow-like milieu, the viewer’s position and gaze are fixed. This elegant construction feels like a scaled-down version of the many theatrical arenas featured in Fogarasi’s film.” (Frieze)

Special news: VENICE, ITALY.-The Hungarian Pavilion has won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation of the 52nd International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
For the first time in the history of the Venice Biennale, the Golden Lion for the best national participation was awarded to the Hungarian Pavilion, which this year featured Andreas Fogarasi’s project Kultur und Freizeit (Culture and Leisure), curated by Katalin Timár.
“The Golden Lion for an outstanding national participation is being given to a pavilion where architecture and cultural history are deployed to generate intelligent and poetic relations between content, visual language and structural display. The Jury also considers important the artist’s aproach to modernity, its utopias and failures in the context of the shared history.”

Kultur und Freizeit, 2007, exhibition view
Hungarian Pavilion Giardini di Castello, 52nd International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, Photo: Tihanyi-Bakos Fotóstúdió

 

Biography

Andreas Fogarasi was born 1977 in Vienna, he lives and works in Vienna.

Since 2001 co-editor, Dérive - Zeitschrift für Stadtforschung
2002/03 Le pavillon, Palais de Tokyo, Paris
2000-2002 co-editor, 71133 - Zeitung der Kunstuniversitäten
1999-03 Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna
1997-99 Freie Klasse Vienna
1997 co-editor, Test - Zeitschrift für Raumgestalten
1995-99 Hochschule für angewandte Kunst (architecture), Vienna

Selected individual exhibitions

2007 Venice Biennale, Hungarian Pavilion, soloshow
2007 Modelle für Morgen: Köln. Europäische Kunsthalle Köln
2006 Norden. Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Wien / Österreich
2005 Westen (aka Osten), Grazer Kunstverein, Graz
Süden, Porschehof/Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg
2004 A ist der Name für ein Modell / Étrangement proche, Liget Galéria, Budapest
2003 ABCity (The Player), Trafó, Budapest (cur.)
Welcome to Regions, Display Gallery, Prague
A ist der Name für ein Modell / Étrangement proche, Offspace, Vienna
2002 Kultúrapark, Stúdió Galéria, Budapest
Culture Park, Galerie 5020, Salzburg
1999 'Bunte Laune', Transit Mechelen

Transit Ramp, 2005, Photo: Susanne Stadler

Selected group exhibitions

2007 # 'Kapitaler Glanz', Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Andreas Fogarasi, Bernhard Kahrmann, David Maljkovic, Pernille Kapper Williams
http://www.kunstverein-duesseldorf.de
# Venice Biennale, Hungarian Pavilion 'Kultur und Freizeit'

2006 Katinka Bock, Andreas Fogarasi, Marlene Haring, Ján Mancuška, Tina Schulz, Christoph Weber. Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris / France
2005 Re:Modern, Künstlerhaus, Vienna
Brutal Ornamental, Galerie Kosak Hall, Vienna
Reading in Absence, Trafó, Budapest
Utopie : Freiheit, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna
29. Österreichischer Grafikwettbewerb, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck
Ansichten der Ökonomie, Kunstraum Lakeside, Klagenfurt
Storyboards – Trapped in the escape, Vector Gallery, Iasi
Skizzen für ein Haus, Künstlerhaus, Salzburg
citysellingcitytelling, Sparwasser HQ, Berlin
2004 Living Room, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna
Viennaer Linien, Vienna Museum Karlsplatz, Vienna
Video as Urban Condition, Austrian Cultural Forum, London
Formate – (re-)constructing the city, Galeria Noua, Bukarest
2003 Gegeben sind... Konstruktion und Situation, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck
Balkan Konsulat proudly presents: Budapest, Rotor, Graz
GNS, Palais de Tokyo, Paris
Gravitation, Moszkva tér / Ludwig Museum, Budapest
Grosser Sommer an der Thaya, Drosendorf, Austria
Site-Seeing: Disneyfizierung der Städte?, Künstlerhaus, Vienna
Evidence, Essor Gallery Project Room, London
Manifesta 4, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt/Main
Double Bind, ATA Center for Contemporary Art, Sofia
Gallery by Night, Stúdió Galéria, Budapest
2001 Szerviz, Mücsarnok, Budapest
Real presence, Studentski Kulturni Centar, Belgrade
A table, an office, a building..., Semperdepot, Vienna
January Show, Passagegalerie Künstlerhaus, Vienna
2000 block, Apex Art C.P., New York
99/00, Semperdepot, Vienna
Selected screenings, lectures, talks
2005 Artist talk at the Free Floating Faculty, Overgaden, Copenhagen
2003 Visual culture, Ludwig Museum, Budapest
BPworkshop, Trafó, Budapest
2002 Softball, Fundus, Kassel
Kultureller Standortwechsel, Basis, Vienna
The risks and responsibilities of representation, Ludwig Museum, Budapest
2001 Du bist die Welt, Künstlerhaus, Vienna

 

1999' Bunte Laune' exhibition in Transit:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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