Márton Magócsi: King of My Castle

Free admission:
March 13 – April 09, 2018
Every day 11 am – 7 pm
Closed on public holidays.
Capa Center – Project Room
Curator: Judit Gellér

Text, editing: Judit Gellér | Installation: Foncsorozó Egyesület | Translation: Vera Bakonyi-Tánczos | Proofreading: Vivien Boronyák, Emese Mucsi | Graphic design, corporate identity: Gabi Halász

The scenes are familiar. Even cozy, so to say. There is the playground on the outskirts of the village. The flags are hung on the dirty tiles of the marketplace stand. And there is the TV with the turtle-shaped back, or the tent garages at Normafa, one of the most frequented green spots in the Buda Hills. They have hardly changed from the look of things, but their content and significance have been very much altered. They recall memories while being very much current.

The photographer Márton Magócsi set out to explore stories related to his own family and friends. His creative path encompasses a recalling of the past, the revival of memories and events, then – by colliding the real and unreal, the old and the new – the interpretation of the present, that is, a kind of search for the truth.

The photographs complemented with texts become subjective interpretations of irony and self-irony, through which we can see the resurrection of partially or fully processed past events. The analog technique, together with the arbitrary distortions and chromatic aberrations caused by the expired film, result in the photographs resembling the atmosphere of old family pictures, which could be found in the albums, drawers or shoeboxes of any of us. The method and objective of taking the photographs are exactly this: recalling a sense of familiarity during which the personal memories of the author are included in the collective memory.

In the process of getting to know these private memories, the recent history of Hungary, which is closely intertwined with the geographical, social, economic and political context, is also ultimately delineated. How – if at all – was our lifestyle, value system changed by the change of political regime, the opening up of the borders, the resulting availability of foreign products? What legacy has the Socialist past left us? What did the free market change and leave untouched in this Central-Eastern European country predisposed to seclusion?

Márton Magócsi’s series titled King of My Castle is about the presentation of his own experiences, the reinterpretation of family legends and stories of friends, which, in a sense, means not only the recalling and processing of the personal but also of the collective past. However, in the slide projection, we see the past and the present, the real and the fictive intertwined: the archive and the recent images are presented in an unsettling sequence. Memories are creating memories. (Judit Gellér, curator)