Hungarian National Gallery, Building “A” Magyar Nemzeti Galéria / Hungarian National Gallery, Building “A”
Budavári Palota, A-B-C-D épület 1014 Budapest, Szent György tér 2., www.mng.hu theatricality of his art. Through intensive and passionate juxtapositions of colours, spaces, sizes and shapes, his works impact on the viewer with an imposing, almost magnetic power. This is exemplified by one of the sensations of the show: a display of the monumental ensemble of stage and costumes from his Dzhan panopticons, the celebratory games that he performed for a period lasting more than twenty years. Every presentation of El Kazovsky, must deal specifically with the question of sexual identity - in a tactful but clear way - for not to do so would be hypocritical. His deeply influential family and cultural roots, and his love of classical Russian literature and culture, are also given their own dedicated section. Although essentially independent from the previous El Kazovsky: On Holiday I (Resting Parca VI), sections, there is no avoiding the avant1992 © Szalóky Collection garde origins that marked the start of El Kazovsky’s career, and the Hungarian The Survivor’s Shadow - The counterculture of the 1970s Life and Works of El Kazovsky underground and 1980s. Finally, in a self-contained 6 November - 14 February 2016 section provocatively named the “White Cube”, we focus the spotlight on El El Kazovsky (1948-2008) was one of the most original and potent Hungarian Kazovsky’s painting. In contemporary artists of the late twentieth century and art criticism, the expression refers to that apparently neutral gallery space which the turn of the millennium. As a painter, places exclusive focus on the “purely” a performance artist, a stage designer and - as we now know - a poet, he left an aesthetic and “absolute painterly” qualities enormous legacy of works, whose immense of the works. This exhibition was made possible with vivaciousness and profundity were the cooperation of the El Kazovsky immediately clear to his contemporaries. Foundation. This exhibition of close to 400 of his works at the Hungarian National Gallery is intended to offer a more precise art historical picture of everything that El Kazovsky left behind after his painfully early death. Each of the distinctly separate sections of the exhibition allows us to see a different characteristic cross-section of the life and works of El Kazovsky. The artist was intensely drawn to the fetishisation of certain objects, people and artworks. The acts of raising, worshipping and demolishing fetish objects formed a central theme of the artist’s paintings, installations and celebrated performances: his insatiable and doting desire for unattainable Beauty brought to life a tremendous multitude of richly sensitive artistic surrogates for the living body of the Other. The way he toyed with fiction, with frames, with planar projections, with the form of graphic novels and with Red Clouds (Large Red Clouds), 2000., Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest literary roles sustains the deeply sprung 9