Márton Perlaki

The first solo exhibition of the Hungarian photographer Márton Perlaki is now presented in the Project Room of the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center in Budapest, showcasing a small selection of his series Bird, Bald, Book, Bubble, Bucket, Brick, Potato created in 2014-2015.

The individual photos of the series are connected by repeated motifs in order to create an organic visual system of recurring elements, such as stuffed birds hog-tied with fine thread, chemical reactions creating the illusion of movement, or the images of reinterpreted still-lifes. The most elemental feature of this coherent allegorical series of object and portrait photos is that it is organized around a single, peculiar character.

Elemér, the bald protagonist with alabaster skin can in no way be considered to be an average photographic phenomenon. The overemphasized and unrealistically enlarged objects defining the photo series appear even more compelling in relation to the “giant.” In the exhibition space these two different themes – the portraits of the protagonist and those of the objects – alternate in an organic way. We automatically perceive both topics as cohesive; almost as if we were walking in a wax museum displaying props and movements from a screenplay.

Due to his extraordinary build, the movements of the statuesque man often have a more pathetic and theatrical effect than usual. Thus, the experimental language of theater and cinema are invoked by the photo series, which is not surprising from Márton Perlaki who graduated as a director of photography from the University of Theatre and Film Arts.

The pieces of the series question the communicative mechanisms and aesthetic conventions needed to understand reality. The alternative reality presented through the material created during the meticulously planned studio work is barely taking shape in front of us, while we also receive only partial information for understanding.

Perlaki does nothing other than take an object from its original context and place it in a specific area which is still hard to delineate beyond it being an object. This gesture then transforms his images into a visual allegory which urges us to continuously search for a meaning in the photos and to interlace the elements into one narrative. Still, an unambiguous understanding seems to be impossible due to the dual nature of the series, which is permeated by dichotomies like the familiar and the unknown, reality and fiction, or seriousness and humor.

Our ambition to get closer to the story of the protagonist in the series is even more disturbed by the one unavoidably odd photo, which occupies just as much of a central position in the series as the rest of the photographs. In particular, this photograph – an enlarged picture of a card depicting a potato – provides an explanation for the title of the exhibition.

This work of art is out of line regarding its medium as it is a photo of a graphical object. The humor and irony so important for the artist are embodied by this giant potato, which does not only interrupt the series, but also deflects the process of interpretation to new areas. Theatrical seriousness is spiced up with some color of childish playfulness through the graphical image of an innocent object.

The piece is virtually a flashcard for learning a language, the operation principle of which is to have the picture of an object on the front side of the card presented together with words of similar pronunciation or spelling on the back, so that the learner can recall the correct word-picture pair as an after image during the learning process. The same principle is reflected in the title of the exhibition, which is originally conceived in English, as referred to by the drawing of the potato as well: in the enumeration of objects featured in the series and starting with the letter B, there is an odd object-name listed as well – potato which starts with the letter P.

In April, parallel with the exhibition, the whole series will be published by the British publishing company Loose Joints in book format.

Márton Perlaki (Budapest, 1982) is an artist with a background in cinematography and photojournalism. He graduated with a master’s degree from the University of Theatre and Film Arts, Budapest, in 2011. He co-founded the Anglo-Hungarian biannual publication The Room in 2004, where he worked as a photo editor until 2015. He was shortlisted for the internationally acknowledged photography prize, the Paul Huf Award, and he was chosen as one of the most talented young photo artists of 2015 by FOAM (FotoMuseumAmsterdam). In the same year, his photograph was featured in the selection for the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize in the National Portrait Gallery, London. His works appeared in magazines like T Magazine, Time Magazine, Wallpaper*, M le Monde or Holiday Magazine. Márton Perlaki lives and works in New York.

The curator of the exhibition:
Zita Sárvári

The exhibition is open to the public:
08/03/2016 – 11/04/2016