Martin Frey
DIALOGUE BUDAPEST - VIENNA
Martin Frey
DIALOGUE BUDAPEST - VIENNA
BUDAPEST WINDOWS - IT´S ALL ABOUT SHOP WINDOWS – BUT ALSO MORE …
Dialogue Budapest – Vienna was the title of a one-year workshop held by Martin Frey during the academic year 2016/17. From September of 2016 until June of 2017, he met once a week in Budapest with students from Eszter Sárkics’s class at the Dekoratőr és Kirakatrendező Iskola (School for Decoration and Window Dressing). The participants’ names were Csenge Győrbíró, Doroti Juhász, Eleonóra Kollár, Erika Kölüs, Andrea Magyari, Éva Adrienne Novák, Dóra Rácz, Erik Rácz, Diána Simon, Dániel Sziráki and Tamás Tancer. This workshop was part of the Budapest Windows - It´s all about shop windows – but also more… project by Martin Frey and Hanna Schimek, a further development of their project Vienna Windows – Display in Process, whose results were first presented in Vienna in 2014, as a part of the international photo festival Eyes On. Signs or handwritten notes featuring the Austrian coinage “Display in Process” are often to be found in Vienna, indicating that a business’s display is currently being redesigned or provided with a fresh arrangement. In our project, this phrase becomes a metaphor for the continuous changes to the urban landscape. The artistic and urban-research photo project on the display windows of small shops and businesses was carried out together with Martin Frey in the streets of Budapest. The project Dialogue Budapest – Vienna can be seen as a reflection upon contemporary urban developments and as a contribution to the history of everyday life in the city of Budapest. Doroti Juhász, Erika Kölüs, Andrea Magyari, Éva Adrienne Novák, Diána Simon and Dániel Sziráki contributed to its realisation. Over 200 photographs of display windows were created during a number of photographic explorations carried out together in very different districts and parts of Budapest. These images were shot exclusively with smartphone cameras. A selection of them enter into an associative dialogue with Viennese display windows, specifically those in the photos from the Vienna Windows project. After the walks through Budapest, the given routes and the circumstances specific to those parts of the city were discussed and located graphically on a map of the city. The development, the mix of different kinds of businesses and the concentration of businesses as well as the composition of their potential customers were of particular interest, especially when taking into account the surrounding infrastructure and nearby shopping malls. The photos selected for presentation were picked during a collective process carried out together with the participating students at the end of the school year; this also applies to the composition of the juxtaposed photographs
from Vienna. A digital slide show has been chosen as the form of presentation. In this way, the large-scale projection of a total of 116 display windows from Budapest and Vienna will initiate a dialogue lasting around 15 minutes. The one-year workshop concludes with a final project in which a vacant shop in the 8th district of Budapest is transformed into a “Local Hero / Helyi Hős” in the form of a multimedia installation. During the workshop Dialogue Budapest – Vienna and the resulting time spent in Budapest, this dialogue expanded thematically and Martin Frey bundled it together in two other independent photographic works: His photo series Love Is the Answer and the photo installation Das Eisstanitzel / A Fagyi, which includes a sculpture by László Korga. All works are shown during Budapest Windows – It´s all about shop windows – but also more… A series of exhibitions by Martin Frey & Hanna Schimek (AT), presented in Budapest from 23rd November to 11th December 2017 at FUGA – Budapest Center of Architecture and PUCCS Contemporary Art, in cooperation with Dekoratőr és Kirakatrendező Iskola (School for Decoration and Window Dressing) and students from the class of Eszter Sárkics, Miklós Erhardt, László Korga, János Sugár, Gruppo Tökmag (HU) and Victoria Square Project (Athens/GR). FUGA – Budapest Center of Architecture - Dialogue Budapest – Vienna (photo projection) - Love Is the Answer (photo series) PUCCS Contemporary Art - Das Eisstanitzel / A Fagyi (photo installation with a sculpture by László Korga) VACANT SHOP - Local Hero / Helyi Hős (intervention, multimedia installation)
https://budapestwindows.wordpress.com
FUGA – Budapest Center of Architecture Martin Frey: Dialogue Budapest – Vienna Digital slide show, 116 photographs, large-scale projection, c.15 min., Budapest/Vienna 2016/17 Photographs, selection, composition by: Martin Frey, Doroti Juhász, Erika Kölüs, Andrea Magyari, Éva Adrienne Novák, Eszter Sárkics, Hanna Schimek, Diána Simon, Dániel Sziráki
Dialogue Budapest - Vienna Martin Frey in cooperation with students from the School for Decoration and Window Dressing
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Love Is the Answer Martin Frey
When I came to Budapest a few times in the early 1990s, the Pepsi Cola logo was omnipresent: you could find it on almost every grocery store, on “ABC” corner shops and on kiosks. However – contrary to my assumption at that time – this did not represent a Western brand’s campaign of conquest shortly after the fall of “Iron Curtain” and the opening of the borders. Pepsi Cola had been there for a long time: In 1959 Richard Nixon, then vice-president of the US, had offered the Soviet premier Khrushchev a glass of Pepsi at the Pepsi Cola stand of the American National Exhibition in Moscow; Khrushchev reportedly drank it down with delight. Along with the images of the legendary “Kitchen Debate”, which took place at the same time, this image travelled around the world as a symbol of hopes for a possible military détente during the Cold War. For the Pepsi brand this event opened doors into the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries. This period also marked the beginning of the so-called Cola War between Pepsi Cola and Coca Cola, which the two brands would fight out relentlessly over the following decades in a struggle for world domination. Richard Nixon, who had been a lawyer for Pepsi for many years, finally played a part as president in a 1970s deal that would secure Pepsi exclusive rights in the Soviet Union for 20 years. The old Pepsi Cola logos and advertisements have almost entirely disappeared from the Budapest cityscape since that time. On the one hand, they were testimonies to the transition from the Cold War and a planned economy to a market economy; on the other hand, however, they were also the symbol of a trade war that was actually carried out between American big brands – around the world and hidden from public view. While exploring the city in 2016/17, I was able to locate and photographically document a small handful of advertisements still remaining in the cityscape. The result is the series Love Is the Answer.
FUGA – Budapest Center of Architecture Martin Frey: Love Is the Answer Series of 8 photographs, 40 x 40 cm, fine art prints on aluminium composite panel, Budapest/Vienna 2016/17
Budapest, Klauzál utca
Budapest, Diószeghy Sámuel utca
Budapest, Diószeghy Sámuel utca
Budapest, Nefelejcs utca
Budapest, Baross utca
Budapest, Víg utca
Budapest, Víg utca
Das Eisstanitzel / A Fagyi Martin Frey / László Korga
One day on Orczy út – a street at the very edge of Józsefváros, Budapest’s 8th district – I completely unexpectedly found myself standing in front of a window display featuring an oversized sculpture of an ice cream cone, like the kind otherwise often found in front of ice cream parlours. The shop appeared empty, the displays were dusty, the windows murky. Nonetheless, the glow of the ice cream radiated all the way to the other side of the street. It was not one of those mass-produced things made of plastic: it was obviously unique and handmade. At the same time, among its surroundings, it seemed as unreal to me as a mirage … While photographing the display with the ice cream, I met its creator: László Korga is a decorator and his workshop is located behind these shop windows. He created the ice cream cone in 2011 and has made four more since then. The colourful scoops of ice cream are made of polyurethane foam coated with interior paint, the cone is made of cardboard mounted on a reinforced frame, and the base is styrofoam. Not far from this workshop Bullet Shih has had his gallery PUCCS – Contemporary Art in a small, former business space for several years. The exhibitions are presented around the clock and throughout their duration to interested visitors and also to random passersby by way of the view from the street. Previously PUCCS had been one of those typical little Budapest businesses with a narrow door and just one display. As chance would have it, the colour and dimensions of the doorway’s edges are also very similar to those of László Korga’s workshop on Ocrzy út. What happens to an advertising object that is transferred from a business’s display window into the display of an art gallery? Does it become a piece of art? What was it before? Decoration or art? Will its value change? What is its value? Who determines its value? Will its creator become an artist? Will the gallery, which had previously been a little neighbourhood business, become a place of business again? On the other hand, a gallery is also a business … These are some of the questions that occurred to me as I accompanied the ice cream cone on its way from the workshop’s display to PUCCS: questions about the relationship between art and commerce, advertising and art and the sweet dreams of an ice cream cone. Now it’s here. In the middle of the space there is the ice cream sculpture and, in the background, my photograph of the ice cream as I had originally come across it in the display on Orczy út. We’ll see …
PUCCS Contemporary Art Martin Frey / László Korga: Das Eisstanitzel / A Fagyi Photo installation with a sculpture by László Korga, Budapest 2017 Martin Frey: Das Eisstanitzel Photograph, 240 x 180 cm, digital print on PVC vinyl, 450g/m², Budapest/Vienna 2017 László Korga: A Fagyi Sculpture, 180 x 80 x 80 cm, interior paint, polyurethane foam, cardboard, styrofoam, Budapest 2011
Budapest, Orczy út
Local Hero / Helyi hős Martin Frey in cooperation with students from the School for Decoration and Window Dressing
A declaration of love to the “local heroes” of the neighbourhood. What does it mean when you miss the little shops in your neighbourhood and those nearby little businesses which remain miss you? How does your daily routine change, your day-to-day life? Why do we sometimes – or even very often – prefer to shop at large shopping centres or online? This is the final project of the one-year workshop “Dialogue Budapest – Vienna” at the School for Decoration and Window Dressing. Together with students from Eszter Sárkics’s class “Organizing Objects in Space”, I will transform a vacant shop in Budapest’s 8th district into a “Local Hero / Helyi Hős”: All of the shopfront’s glass will be covered with reflective foil, and little peepholes will provide a glimpse into the shop’s interior. In the reflective surface of its shopfront, the business will mirror its surroundings as well as passersby, who can also recognise themselves as local heroes for the moment they take to pause. Looking into the interior through the peepholes of the display windows, viewers are able to see objects borrowed from the Budapest businesses whose displays were included in the digital slide show Dialogue Budapest – Vienna. This projection will also be shown here around the clock (24/7). In addition, at the level of the wall’s base, a bright beam of light emerges out of a small section cut out of one window’s foil: it is meant to resemble an imaginary threshold – particularly at night – and invite passersby to pause. The “Archian” typeface used for the “Helyi Hős” lettering on the shopfront was designed by the painter and graphic artist György Szőnyei, who began teaching in 1988, at the School for Decoration and Window Dressing, among other places.
Martin Frey: Local Hero / Helyi Hős In cooperation with students from the School for Decoration and Window Dressing. Intervention, multimedia installation, Budapest 2017 Photograph of the shop at Nagy Fuvaros utca. 3a and photographic simulation of the transformation
Budapest, Nagy Fuvaros utca. 3a
Budapest, Nagy Fuvaros utca. 3a: Simulation of transformation
Editor 2focus on – kunst.kultur.verein, Vienna Concept, text and graphic design Martin Frey www.martinfrey.at Translation into English Michael Wetzel Print Pixartprinting S.p.A, Italy 1st edition 2017 ISBN 978-3-9504397-2-4 © Martin Frey / Vienna 2017 – All rights reserved
This book was published in the context of Budapest Windows – It´s all about shop windows – but also more… A series of exhibitions by Martin Frey & Hanna Schimek (AT), presented in Budapest from 23rd November to 11th December 2017 at FUGA – Budapest Center of Architecture and PUCCS Contemporary Art. A project in cooperation with and supported by Dekoratőr és Kirakatrendező Iskola (School for Decoration and Window Dressing), Magyarországi Dekoratőrök és Kirakatrendezők Szövetsége (Hungarian Decorators and Windowdressers Association), FUGA – Budapesti Építészeti Központ (FUGA – Budapest Centrer of Architecture), Jaschik Álmos Művészeti Szakgimnázium (Jaschik Álmos Professional School), Osztrák Kulturális Fórum Budapest (Austrian Cultural Forum Budapest) and PUCCS Contemporary Art. Special thanks to Júlia Őry (FUGA – Budapesti Építészeti Központ), Zsuzsanna Pintérné Varga (Jaschik Álmos Művészeti Szakgimnázium), Mag. Regina Rusz (Osztrák Kulturális Fórum Budapest), Miklós Sándor (Magyarországi Dekoratőrök és Kirakatrendezők Szövetsége), Eszter Sárkics (Dekoratőr és Kirakatrendező Iskola), Bullet Shih (PUCCS Contemporary Art) and Mag. Fábián Vörös (Osztrák Kulturális Fórum Budapest).
BUDAPEST WINDOWS - IT´S ALL ABOUT SHOP WINDOWS – BUT ALSO MORE …