oil/canvas

Originally, this exhibition was to be part of the series "Situation" which included a large-scale sculpture exhibition, yet due to various circumstances it has simultaneously become more and less than its original conception. Also part of the series were two other exhibitions: a photo exhibition organized by the Assembly of Hungarian Photographers in the winter of 1995, and the Hungarian Salon exhibition that that was organized along the principle that anyone could include their work. Both reflected a certain particular "situation" yet especially after the latter, Hungarian painting could not be presented as it had been originally planned. Primarily we intended to create an exhibition that would demonstrate the breaking of painting's traditional borders as well as all the directions that painterly thought has expanded upon, however, the heterogeneous Salon exhibition forced us to return to one strict principle: search for a contemporaneous artistic tendency within the framework of traditional painting. We have been accused of having created an "anti-Salon" exhibition, which is a misunderstanding. We have remained faithful to our original principles with the one exception that we have insisted on a high level of quality both in the artists exhibited and our own curatorial responsibility.
The ultimate purpose of this exhibition was to present the current state of Hungarian painting to the public, with the knowledge that not only a project such as this has not been undertaken for several decades, as well as that from several perspectives this is an unique undertaking. There was an exhibition of "New Painting" in the Ernst Museum in 1984 curated by Lóránd Hegyi under the title „Wet Paint", although there were only about 25–30 participating artists. Then, at least according to the prevailing standards of the avant-garde, painting was considered a taboo and it was exactly this problem that confronted the values of the Avant-garde/trans-avant-garde (or that of Modernism/Postmodernism. Our exhibition intended to present not only what is new, but taking Hungarian painting as a whole, tried to select everything that represents what contemporary painting has become at the end of the millennium. The exhibition was created in joint cooperation by many different curators among which Katalin Tímár and Zsolt Petrányi had a prominent role in respect to both the conception of the entire exhibition and the inclusion of younger artists. We also intended to present a „panorama" of Hungarian painting with the appropriate documentation. Some of the introductory studies of the catalogue, even if their main argument is not the critical analysis of the historical process, clearly define the main points of the discourse that may serve as the background of contemporary Hungarian painting. The majority of the catalogue is left for the documentation of the paintings themselves, and in fact even more than the exhibited pieces. The artists are presented through short and concise statements or critical texts instead of a long record of their artistic and exhibition backgrounds. The catalogue is completed with a list of important exhibitions and publications relevant in the development of painting starting from the 1960s.

László Beke