Gábor Gerhes: Die Ordnung

The Capa Center presents the exhibition Gábor Gerhes Die Ordnung at the art Karlsruhe 2015 Classic Modern and Contemporary Art fair (March 5-8, 2015).

Gábor Gerhes, the Master of Order

In this exhibition, which was previously presented in 2013 in Hungary with much professional interest and acclaim, Gábor Gerhes draws up everything he thinks of our world, including his own art. He speaks with a high level of professional sophistication and sensitivity about an elementary desire for freedom, as well as about his own critical and analytical habitude. His seismograph-like stature compelled him to make precise observations, smart situation analyses and to formulate his thoughts on the current social and political situation. This reflective attitude calls attention to the repressive force of the political power and to the defencelessness of the people. He draws up his ideas with a relentless and sharp perception in face of the political power which regards itself infallible. He says that the task of the artist is to raise a problem, but he leaves the spectators to freely choose their response. Free choice, above all!

Well-known dictatorships – as he wrote in an essay, – where the minority rules above the majority, are sustained by the chosen few. These regimes are reinforced by the conformism of the other people who want to survive.

“Confabulatio”, the central piece of the exhibition is the incarnation of this mysterious and faceless New Power. The (camouflaged) Master of Order endowed with fictitious requisites, religious allegories, peculiar metaphors, and popular attributes is the artist himself. His inscrutable order is only interested in power. The staged figures around him are the secret members of this New Order. Leaders and subjects. Servants and defenceless people. Miserable empty souls escaping to the facelessness of the power.

Krisztina Jerger

Gábor GERHES
(1962 Budapest)

Mihály Munkácsy Prize-winning artist. External lecturer at the Media and Design institutes of the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest since 2006 and at the Photography Department of the BKF University of Applied Sciences in Budapest since 2010. Member of the Degree Board. Senior lecturer at the Photography Department of KREA (Contemporary Art School) and art director at the Európa Publishing House. Beside photography and fine art, he also works with graphic design.

His works from recent years have particularly focused on transcultural phenomena, national identity and collective consciousness with construction, reconstruction and presentation at their centre.
His artistic activities have been supported by the fellowship of the Soros Foundation, by the Eötvös Foundation of the Ministry of Culture and Public Education, by the Gyula Derkovits fellowship for fine arts and several times by the artist prize of the National Cultural Fund of Hungary. He has been awarded the prize of the Municipality of Budapest, the prize of the Studio of Young Artists, the prize of the Hungarian daily Magyar Hírlap, the prize of the Municipality of Óbuda, the prize of Art Future 2000 – Taipei, the special prize by the Ministry of National Cultural Heritage, the Mihály Munkácsy Prize and the 2009 fine art award of excellence by the Mozgó Világ magazine, among others. In 2014, he was awarded the prize of AICA (International Association of Art Critics) for his exhibition New Order displayed at the Trafó Gallery. In 2014, he was selected as one of the 30 best photographers by the Kreatív magazine.

He has been regularly displaying his works since 1985 at solo and collective shows at major Hungarian exhibition halls, including the Ludwig Museum, the Hall of Art (Műcsarnok), the National Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Modem in Debrecen, as well as in Szeged, Pécs, Dunaújváros, Veszprém, Székesfehérvár, Miskolc and Szombathely. His works have also been displayed abroad at major exhibition halls, for example in Paris (Grand Palais, Louvre-Caroussel), Montpellier (FRAC), Brussels (BOZART), Helsinki, Bratislava, Warsaw (Palace Ujazdowsky), Bucharest, Vienna, Lisbon, London (Anthony Reynolds Gallery), Trieste, Berlin (Akademie der Künste), Taiwan and the United States of America. In 2009, he was assigned by the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest to shoot a video in Israel. In 2013, he was one of the exhibitors at the Prague Biennale.

He has been taking part in the work of various artists’ colonies and symposia since 1997 in Hungary (1997- Paks, 1999 – Szeged, 2001, 2005, 2009 – Makó, 2005 – Miskolc). He was working in Frankfurt and Vienna with artist fellowships and he spent longer periods under residence programs in Paris from 2004 to 2005 and in 2007.
He is a member of the painter section at the National Association of Hungarian Artists (MAOE, previously the Art Fund of the Hungarian People’s Republic), the Association of Hungarian Photographers and the Intermedia section of MAOE. He became a member of the Studio Association of Young Artists in 1987 where he was a board member from 1989 to 1997 and vice president from 1995 to 1998.

Some of his works have been bought by Hungarian collections, including the Soros Foundation in Budapest, the Museum of Contemporary Art – Ludwig Museum, the Vintage Gallery, the KOGART Foundation, the Hungarian National Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Hermann Ottó Museum in Miskolc, the First Hungarian Visual Collection (Első Magyar Látványtár) and the Miskolc Gallery, the Public Foundation for Modern Art in Dunaújváros (Institute of Contemporary Art), the Hungarian Museum of Photography in Kecskemét, the Art Gallery of Szombathely, the King Saint Stephen Museum in Székesfehérvár and the MODEM Collection in Debrecen. Some of his works are owned by major private collections, including the Irokéz Collection, the Somlói-Spengler collection and Károly Gerendai’s collection, etc. Abroad, his works are included in the H. Ringier collection and the Kunsthaus Glarus in Switzerland, the public collection of the Stiftung DZ Bank AG in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, as well as by other Hungarian and international private collections.

The artist is represented by the acb Gallery in Hungary.
www.acbgaleria.hu

Curator:
Krisztina Jerger art historian

Location:
art Karlsruhe 2015 Classic Modern and Contemporary Art fair
Messe Karlsruhe
Messealle 1 – 76287 Rheinstetten

The exhibition is open to the public:
5/03/2015 – 8/03/2015