cseke szilárd

Szilárd Cseke, Sustainable Identities

9 May 2015 – 22 November

Venice, Giardini

Szilárd Cseke represented Hungary at the 56th Venice Biennale with his project Sustainable Identities. The exhibition venue is one of the oldest national pavilions at the biennale. The artist and the curator, Kinga German created an interactive and site-specific space-, light- and sound installation. For the interactive part of the exhibition a group of students and teachers from Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest (MOME) cooperated in realizing the project.

To the left of the main entrance a sound-installation served as an inauguration of the senses in the cylindrical entrance room. This sound installation was co-created according to plans of the artist by Ábris Gryllus, alumnus of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest (MOME). The noise music piece was composed from sound recordings made from previous artworks by Cseke Szilárd.

The square shaped exhibition hall had seven wall to wall tubes stretched out between two smaller and one wider wall. Inside the tubes white polystyrene spheres were moving. The forty centimetre diameter tubes crossed each other and created a grid, resulting in a monumental effect. The tube system which was installed above eye-level filled the exhibition space and lifted visitors gaze continuously throughout the exhibition. The tubes were not rigid, as their material was foil. The tubes were stretched by the air currents created by the ventilator at both sides. In the tubes spheres rolled at different speed, in a coordinated way driven by the air current. The spheres waited for various time periods at the end of the tubes.

In the apse there was a slight incline that lead to a wooden podium, which had a 4 meter diameter cushion-like object lighted from below. In the middle of the cushion there was a circular plexiboard with two ventilators that blew air into the “cushion sheets”. Before the cushion would explode, there was a time switch included which stopped the ventilators, and restarted the ventilator again as soon as the cushion was on the verge of deflation. The artwork filled up the exhibition space tightly leaving only a narrow space for visitors to navigate through the exhibition room.

In the cylindrical space to the right of the main entrance there was an interactive installation which was sponsored by the company Possible. Visitors could talk into a microphone and the verbalised thoughts appeared visually on a tablet screen. This could be sent to any given address electronically. The system operated based on the principle that the soundwaves triggered an optimal white sphere to change into a corresponding virtual three-dimensional space object.

The grey walls and the artificial, cold light illuminating the installation, which was used instead of the natural skylights added to the unique, discomforting spatial ensemble. The objects were lighted by LED lighting strips that were switched in succession, which helped to create the unified aura of the space.

As it has been mentioned before the pavilion has been partially modified for the needs of the exhibition, however the installation also lived with the opportunities presented by the architectural space. This was exemplified in the case of the open atrium, which was separated spatially and functionally from the rest of the exhibition. The central point of the pavilion served as an interactive space for visitors. The opaque black coloured blackboard paint that covered the two shorter walls and the supplied spherical white chalk pieces of different sizes gave a chance for the visitors to reflect on the words sustainability and identity. Installed on the wall a black, metal wheel could be turned around showing words, ideas and concepts corresponding to these ideas. The collection of ideas, words was presented in different languages.

As a virtual expansion of the exhibition there was a video work which could be reached online on the website of the exhibition. For the cinematic realisation of the concept developed by the Szilárd Cseke, Mihály Lukács university student collaborated with the artist. In the short film white polystyrene spheres are in front of a white canvas and are spray painted with white and black colours. The spray stains the spheres and due to the propelling momentum created by the power-gas, the spheres leave a mark on the surface of the canvas as well. Certain balls stick to the canvas because of the paint, other spheres collide, leave a trace on each other or even stick together. The orbit of these spheres creates an abstract pattern, which is based on chance, just like human fate. Also on the white canvas only the black colour stands out, and this shows the persuasive power of context.

The focus of Szilárd Cseke's multi-media exhibition DROP is - in addition to the painting material - the artist's latest electronically manipulated "found object" space and sound installation. The artist draws our attention to the role of water in the search for the possibility of re-energizing after the final collapse. Water, if it exists, as a vehicle for life, finds a place in the synthetic by-products of civilisation. Its dripping sound is also a melody of the possibility of life. The composer and musical assistant of the electronic music that permeates the whole exhibition is electronic sound artist Gábor Varsás, a sound collector of our dwindling natural waters and springs. The painting part of Szilárd Cseke's exhibition is a series of large-scale abstract canvases, a visual representation of absolute painterly surfaces that originate from gesture painting or abstraction. The system of coloured paints, resulting from the deliberately haphazard use of tools, applied almost randomly to the canvases, evokes our memory of a seemingly untouched nature, a wooded landscape. In seeing the images, we thus transform the painterly, informal structures into a personally experienced reality. Szilárd Cseke, modifying his earlier creative practice, has recently incorporated artificial intelligence into the design phase of his paintings. The concept of the exhibition is a critique of a civilisation that imagines itself as modern and that is only virtualising its knowledge of nature. Cseke's exhibition DROP is a reflection on our ambivalent feelings about the "AI" applications that increasingly dominate our existence. A particular interpretation is given to a question the artist had asked long before, in the title of one of his 2007 exhibitions: "where is the forest I am painting?"

Szilárd Cseke I Stano Masár

Jan Koniarek Gallery - Synagogue - Centre of Contemporary Art Trnava Slovakia

Curator: Nina Vrbanová

12 09 - 30 10 2022

The artistic programmes of a duo of visual artists from Hungary and Slovakia are combined in this curatorial project. In the distinctive space of a former Jewish synagogue, the urgent question is posed of whether and to what extent there is sustainability without empathy. Via the exhibition situation, where two impressive artistic positions from different countries and contexts communicate and cooperate, the project calls for empathy as a condition of any kind of sustainability, durability and development.

The exhibition thinks rather in universal or philosophical categories and in that sense aims to be apolitical. It accentuates the shared or kindred qualities of individual visual programmes, notably in this case interactivity as a basis, the playful approach, and simultaneously the markedly conceptual accent. Affinities in the exhibition space communicate, respond to each other, complement and extend each other. They create a situation of cooperation and em-pathy.

Szilárd Cseke’s dominant interactive installation is a visual allusion to the unremitting flow of civilisation, the evolutionary “machinery” of life including its heroes and trendsetters, and also its dissenters. Dynamic, in places clamorous, industrial movement, as a metaphor of existence, may be decelerated and refined by leaving one’s own message on one of the pingpong balls. The universal situation thus becomes exceptionally human.

The essence of Stano Masár’s interactive game consists in an idea of individual action and responsibility. Every shot at the billiard balls introduces a unique series of relationships, meanings and constellations. Love, time, illusion and reality play together. Masár’s game, however, has neither winner nor conclusion. The subjective situation thus changes and be-comes universal, or indeed philosophical. Both these artistic approaches, together with other works, call us to become more sensitive and empathetic, and to reflect on the values of contemporary existence.

Szilárd Cseke (*1967, Hungary) graduated from the University of Pécs in 1991, and in 1995 from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Pécs, Faculty of Painting, postgraduate artist master's course. His masters were Ilona Keserü, István Bencsik and Gyula Konkoly. His most significant works have been presented in the genres of painting and interactive installations. The themes of his painting are our natural environment and series of paintings reflecting on social phenomena. His interactive installations explore themes of identity or economy and society. His multimedia project Sustainable Identities was featured at the 56th Venice International Biennale of Fine Arts. Munkácsy Prize winner since 2014. As a visual arts organizer, he has conceptualized and implemented numerous exhibition projects in non-profit and commercial galleries, national and international art fairs. He was co-founder and professional director of the Ani Molnár Gallery and Park Gallery in Budapest. His work is included in several major private and public collections: Museum Ludwig, Budapest, Deutsche Telekom, Bonn, AXA Art Americas Corporation, New York, Museum Kiscell – Municipal Picture Gallery Budapest, Contemporary Art Collection – Hungarian National Bank, Budapest, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest.

Stano Masár (*1971, Slovakia) studied at the Faculty of Education, Comenius University in Bratislava, completed his doctoral studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava. He made a scholarship stay at Thames Valley University in London. He was a finalist for the Essl Award (Essl Award). He presents his work at domestic and foreign exhibitions (Venice Biennale of Architecture, Slovak National Gallery, Kunsthalle Bratislava, Museum of Art Žilina, Nitra Gallery, Ludwig Museum Budatest, Mediations Biennale, Modem Debrecen, GASK Kutná Hora, GVU Zlín) and contemporary art fairs (Pulse New York, Miami, ViennaFair Vienna). His works are represented in collections in Slovakia: Slovak National Gallery Bratislava, Museum of Art Žilina, Bratislava City Gallery, Nitra Gallery, J. Koniarek Gallery in Trnava, E. Zmetak Gallery in Nove Zamky, abroad, the ECB Collection Frankfurt am Main, and in private collections (Lewben Art Foundation, Maris Vitols Collection and others). For the artdispečing.sk portal, he programmatically manages video reports on events in Slovak visual art and documentaries on the older generation of artists. He lives and works in Bratislava.

Nina Vrbanová (*1986, Slovakia) is a curator and critic of contemporary visual art. She studied at the Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra (SK) and the Charles University in Prague (CZ). Between 2009 and 2013, she worked as curator and project manager at the Cyprián Majerník Gallery in Bratislava. She pursued her doctoral studies in the field of aesthetics from 2010 to 2016. She worked in Kunsthalle Bratislava as a curator from 2014, and as director and chief curator from 2017 to 2020. She played a leading role in the institution of Kunsthalle Bratislava as an autonomous publicly-funded organisation of the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic and was the author of the organisation’s Founding Document. In 2018, Artbase, the online database of contemporary Slovak visual art, was established on her initiative. She was a member of the Expert Commission to select a representative project for the Pavilion of the Czech and Slovak Republics at the 57th Venice Biennale. As a curator, she has prepared many exhibitions in Slovakia and abroad (selection: Open Depository – permanent exposure of the collection, 2011 / Stano Filko – Oklif Onats: Tranzscendenteaoq 5.D. (4.3.), 2012 – 2013 / Contextual Art. Art in a Context of Art 1991 – 2011, 2013 / PARADOX 90. Curatorial Concepts During Meciarism (1993 – 1998), Out of Limits, 2014 / Pavla Sceranková: Collision of Galaxies, 2015 / Krištof Kintera: Natural Nervosity, 2016 / Look What Is Back? The Slovak State in Contemporary art, 2016 / Ilona Németh: Eastern Sugar, 2018 / Emília Rigová: Čohani z Koni Ajlend. After Bári Raklóri, 2020 / Szilárd Cseke, Stano Masár: Sustainable Empathy, 2022).

The exhibition project is dedicated to the victims of Russia’s invasion and continuing war in Ukraine.

SZILÁRD CSEKE, FALL BY THE ROADSIDE

7 December 2017 - 6 February 2018

Kunsthalle Bratislava, Slovakia

„We must find meaning not simply for our complex personal interrelationships, but also for interrelationships in the global context, as we are part of the whole.”

Gerhard Johann Lischka

With the display at the Kunsthalle LAB entitled Fall by the Roadside Szilárd Cseke realised a spacious, mature installation rich in allusions. The site specific installation is a big kinetic model, a work of art which presses contemporary questions. Cseke put up the installation as a critical model for discussion and intervention.

The goal was to create a complex system, a space filled with eventful life: on a bricollage-path, white table tennis balls continuously rush on the „road”, driven by fans and turbines. The route of the balls is full of obstacles and ambushes. The spheres are occasionally directed from the plotting board into the steeply escalating transparent or even opaque tubes, while some of the spheres fall off, leaving the path. Some balls acquiring a high speed, fly straight into the windows of the exhibition space, from which they bounce back, falling back onto the designated trajectory.

Four polycarbonate plates, acting as walls, protect or obstruct the bouncing balls from falling to the ground. Meanwhile, the path paved with mirror films and lit with LED light-tubes continues: air deflector plates, wire grids refract the light and guide or obstruct the track of the balls. The „traffic” is huge, the motion and the sliding is unpredictable, with the constant danger of dropping off the path. The presence of serendipity is also there, with the visitor’s interaction, who can pick up and put back one of the fallen spheres. Onto the highways of our lives? Ascending and falling under, bouncing back and rebounding.

The installed, maquette-like, route filling up the gallery space can be understood as a symbol of life itself. A performative dimension and a process, the timely progress doesn’t end, as it is cyclic. Surrounded by the ventilators’ humming winds and loud, humdrum noise, the visitor as the observer realizes: he/she is at the center, as a human, almost god-like, or at least in a supportive position. Upon intervention, if he/she puts back the ball upon its fall into its ever-lasting cycle, he/she can relive her/his own similar moments, experiences. When in the past with a gesture, a decision, with a small movement he/she helped someone; helped someone to get back on a track, performing an interaction that was designated to him/her. According to George Simmel, „life is motion”. Complementing perpetual motion, as a significance of the wholeness of existence, good deeds are also a huge part of the process.

The Bratislavan display by Cseke Szilárd is an implication of human fate, the experiences of migrants, expats, lifestyle changers: survivors of euphoric and desperate situations. So the route-model is valid both on a communal and a personal level, like the former site-specific spatial installation entitled Sustainable Identities, at the Biennale Arte in Venezia (2015, Hungarian Pavilion). Big white balls continuously moved back and forth inside seven translucent tubes, which were stretched across the space, and they called attention to identity formations. The system of tubes above the visitors’ heads divides the space into segments. The paths could be interpreted as routes of identities, as constructed images in motion.

Szilárd Cseke „builds on a specific tradition within kinetic art which uses the poetry and dynamism of movable parts in mobiles and environments in order to create images of thought for complex social, economic or ecological processes.” (Fritz Emslander)

For decades, the artist has been creating objects which incorporate movement and which, through their materials and critical titles function as associative elements. Cseke explained in an interview: by the kinetic object Good Shepherd (2013) the goal was, to form a „critical model of contemporary social systems”. (Artguideeast, 2015/02/16)

Sociologist’s Dirk Baecker’s writing that appeared in 2007 as „Next Society” is analyzed by contemporary art theory and art practices. It seems many don’t see his artistic endeavour as a production of artistic artefacts. An artwork is not the goal of art, but its raw ingredient. This means that Cseke’s exhibition in the Kunsthalle LAB, couldn’t have been static and it couldn’t have been independent of the given space. It is simultaneously: a raw ingredient, a plotting board full of innuendos and an abstract system.

„Cseke’s installations offer the possibility to create space to contemplate and remind us that we are travellers.” (Daniela Gottschlich)

Kinga German

curator of the exhibition

Partners of the project:

Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest

Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Sculpture Department Budapest 

Project was supported by KHB, Balassi Institute Bratislava and the K-ARTS Art Foundation

Szilárd Cseke, Jobcentre East

4 October 2012 – 3 December

Ani Molnár Gallery, Budapest

Part of the preliminary preparation for the exhibition consisted of a study tour in Brighton, a popular English holiday location, where one of the largest Hungarian communities is being formed at the moment. People who are part of this community usually work in tourism and in the entertainment industry, choosing to work on a seasonal basis. This leads to the creation of self-governing groups where the individuals try to help each other. Cseke Szilárd was able to fit into this community as a street portrait artist. Spending time with the community Cseke gained first-hand experience of how the individuals of this group live, how they manage their everyday lives, what kind of motivation drives them. The governing offices of Jobcentre Plus have a vital role for the East-European citizens living in the United Kingdom, providing individuals with a wide range of interactive services, for example the printing of advertisements for the job seekers.

The artist spent a significant amount of time in the job centre collecting inspiration and confronting himself with a wide variety of personal stories through dialogue with the people who were dealing with their situations at the job centre.

The starting point of the exhibition was a set of questions which could be mentioned when discussing expatriate communities: What challenges does the receiving society face, and also how does the job seeker experience the process of settling in within this new community? How does this situation become sustainable? How can the future be defined, what is the outcome? How long do the employees stay motivated? Can their dreams be accomplished? Will their children fit into the culture of the majority within the society? Will they achieve higher status then their parents? Is it possible for them to climb the social ladder? Is their stay outside of their native country permanent or temporary? If it is the latter can they count on using the knowledge, experiences they have acquired during their stay abroad?

The artwork that lends its title to the exhibition resembles a business sign. It has Jobcentre East written on it with illuminated letters. It was created based on the green, yellow and white sign of the British institution Jobcentre Plus. It is the same size as the original, using also the same typography and forms, the only difference is in the use of materials (metal, plexi, strip lighting) and in its colour scheme, as this one is metal grey. The work can be understood as a memorial sculpture of an emblematic object for a large community, where the word plus is replaced with the word east. The reason behind this substitution is that the social web which was created by Winston Churchill at the beginning of the 20th century to support British work-related issues, now serves the work-seekers from the eastern side of the European Union, instead of the locals.

The experience inspiring the object titled Fixed Rate was seeing that employees seeking work abroad continuously observe and scrutinize the money rates. This is important because they have to pay attention to the daily rate changes, in order to choose the optimal day for sending money back home. The art object is made from a grey metal sheet, which has laser cut letters and numbers incised into the surface. The object is also made using plexi and strip lighting. In the first horizontal line there are the abbreviations of the national currencies, of those countries where employees usually seek work abroad (Swiss Franc, Euro, British Pound, Swedish Krona, and American Dollar). Vertically arranged is a list of the national currencies of countries where workers migrate from (Czech Krona, Hungarian Forint, Polish Zloty, Romanian Lei, and Turkish Lira). The art object resembles the boards usually showing actual currency rates, similar to the ones that can be found in any bank, the difference only being that here the currency does not change, and thus is not up to date. The values stay the same as on the day the letters were cut with the laser tool. As if time would have stopped, defencelessness is replaced by computability.

The artworks Jobcentre I. and II. appear as luminous bulletin boards. Between two bolted plexi boards there are job advertisements in great number which sometimes even overlap each other. In front of these, made from used plywood furniture, there are counters to write on, giving a chance for visitors to take notes. The advertisements were relevant on the day of the exhibition opening, a good example being the fact that one of the artists’ assistants found a job in the UK looking at these boards. As a variant of these were the objects which had a strong formal analogy to luminous advertising pillars.

Central to the art piece titled Complicated Philosophy is a large-scale cushion, which has an intricate ventilation system inside of it. The material of the “sheets” is a soft, seamless synthetic textile, which has mirror foil mounted on the inside. The strip lighting in the cushion and the mirrored interior creates a peculiar light aura. We can see into the cushion through a plexi board, which is also fitted with two ventilators of different size and performance. The ventilators inject air into the system, causing the cushion to rise. When the cushion is filled with air, the big ventilator “wins” against the smaller one, resulting in the smaller ventilator to start spinning in the opposite direction. This leads to the cushion deflating. This continuous until the system through the same process lets the smaller

Szilárd Cseke, We Are Moving Abroad

14 March 2013 – 12 May

Museum Kiscell / Municipal Picture Gallery Temple exhibiting space Budapest,

The exhibition titled We Are Moving Abroad by Szilárd Cseke raises the issue of a family deciding to move for a prolonged period to another country. The exhibition shows various aspects of this situation – the preliminary decision making, the decision and the experience of finally taking action. These three stages are presented through three exhibition stages. Using the experiences of friends and families in my immediate vicinity and families unknown by me as a starting point, I was confronted with a great deal of objects that were left behind by these people.

The venue is one of Budapest’s most exciting exhibition halls, which has housed various institutions during its’ long history. At one stage the building used to be a church for Trinitarian monks, a barrack and even a furniture salon. Today it is one of Hungary’s most prestigious exhibition venues.

The exhibition was created in a post socialist political environment, where emigrating was not counted as defecting, not to say that as a member of the EU Hungary is also part of the European mobility policy and cooperates in different arrangements made to ensure the development of a common European identity. In 2013 the global tendency of migration was already palpable, but the effects of the migration crisis were not perceptible yet.

The first stage of the exhibition is a kinetic object that is made up from exclusively found materials, which change their function as they become part of the art piece. The four wheeled cuboid’s two base sides and two side walls are made from plywood used in old, discarded furniture. The remaining two sides were made from plexi board found at the decoupling of a German factory building. The object is illuminated from the inside with strip lighting, and as plexi transfers light, the edges of these plastic sheets also act as light strip. Through the plywood sides two ventilators blow air into the cuboid, letting air fill the eight nylon bags which are attached to the reused drum-wheels inside the cuboid. For the injection of air there is an automated system ensuring that always the opposite nylon bags get pumped up in an alternating way; when one expands the one on the other side deflates and vice versa. The air current creates a breathing, sighing sound associating to the difficulties, the hesitation connected to making the big decision. This is concretized by the title of the piece: Should I go or stay?

The second stage of the exhibition was a room-scale installation compiled from everyday, practical objects and then arranged in a circle. Within the installation white polystyrene spheres drift around. In the inner span of the circular ensemble ventilators create an air current moving the spheres. The accumulated objects (sleigh, pram, and mattress) are the property of the artists’ family, and the arrangement of the objects is in connection with the movement of belongings to a new place and the necessary purchase of a garage or the situation of clearing the house. Szilárd Cseke’s paintings of workers, and objects resembling illuminated advertising pillars are part of the installation, but not as exhibition pieces but as objects waiting to be moved, placed in stacks. Within the installation spheres of different sizes roll around, occasionally colliding creating a dense audio layer with the knocking, pattering sounds. I think of these spheres as the smaller and larger members of a family, who have everything in a bag and decided to set out to wander in the world.

Szilárd Cseke, Gone Too Far

18 October 2016 – 8 January 2017

Boca Raton Museum of Art, Miami, FL, USA

Curator: Kathleen Goncharov

 Gone Too Far is Szilárd Cseke’s first solo exhibition in the United States where he introduces himself to the American public. The curator of this exhibition was Kathleen Goncharov who curated the USA pavilion at the 2003 Venice Biennale among other exhibitions. The title alludes to the global scale mass migration. How far can one go in order to seek a better life? Is the travel worth the sacrifices and consequences which follow?

A section of the exhibition is titled Spaces, this consists of a three channel video and an installation which is mounted on the wall. These were created in connection to the 2015 spatial installation of the artist which was exhibited at the Venice Biennale titled Sustainable Identities. In the short film black and white canvases serve as the background for white polystyrene spheres that are being spray painted with black and white paint. The spray paint colours the spheres and due to the propelling qualities of the gas, it also moves the spheres causing marks to appear on the canvas. Some spheres stick to the canvas, while other spheres collide, leave a mark on each other or simply stick together. The orbit of these spheres creates an abstract pattern, which is based on chance, just like human fate. Also on the white canvas only the black colour stands out, and this shows the persuasive power of context and how human perception is dependent on context also. Within the frames of the video there are films recorded from different camera positions on three TV-screens. 3x2 meter canvases, which appear in the film, are mounted on the wall with the help of wall brackets, complimented with spheres of different sizes. The artwork can be categorised as process art, if we don’t connect it to process art made in the sixties and seventies, which is concerned with self-reference and the reflection on the process of making. This term can be justifiably used if we also add the layer of social awareness and the conscious use of socially engaging topics.

The topic of the installation Spaces, and also the complete exhibition deals with the questions of migration and the loss of identity. Furthermore reflecting on the migration of eastern European citizens to the American continent, which happened due to economic and political reasons throughout a number of waves. (E.G. after the 1956 revolution). The question of migration was a question in the family of the artist as well, as one family member went to the United States in 1920, making the issue to be of general interest. One aspect of migration is, that new situations cause new problems, some of which are related to the issue of self-definition in a new environment. It is a unique aspect of the eastern European region, that due to the frequent historical changes, a wide variety of ideological changes shifted the identity structure of individuals and communities.

The next exhibition unit is installed above eye level. It consists of a tubes made from foil and neon material.  The foil tube is stretched between two walls, which face each other. In the tubes ventilators direct a polystyrene sphere from one side to the other side, creating a unique sound. The installation’s hanging light source was created reusing the strip lighting used in the exhibition Cseke showed at the Venice Biennale.

The Biblical parable lends its title to the art piece The Good Shepheard, which consists of a table, a plotting board, with a labyrinth-like structure made from air celled polycarbonate. This is illuminated with LED strip lighting. Through the complex labyrinth ventilators propel Ping-Pong balls. At a certain point in the labyrinth, there is a place where the balls don’t often reach and here there is a hole which was burned into the material. The balls fall through this hole onto the randomly installed ceramic tiles under the table and roll far away. There is a catching device installed next to the table, which gives viewers the chance to redirect the balls back into the labyrinth. The interaction compels viewers to think in a socially sensitive way.

The fourth part of the exhibition is a 4x4 metre foil cushion, which was installed on the wall, and which keeps getting pumped up and deflated due to interaction between the diverse sized ventilators inside the artwork. When the ventilators rotate in one direction, the cushion gets pumped up. At one point the cushion gets so full, that the larger ventilator makes the smaller one change its course. When the two ventilators rotate in different direction, then the ventilator lets the cushion deflate. The bundle of strip lights installed behind the foil creates a cold, discomforting aura of light.

Szilárd Cseke, I Have Great Desire

12 June 2012 – 14 September

Ani Molnár Gallery, Budapest

The title of the exhibition was inspired by a public artwork at the beach of Brighton. The artwork consists of the following text written with steel-letters: „I have great desire, My desire is great.” This short sentence illustrates very well the hopes of the arriving job seekers, who arrive from another country to experience a new life. Szilárd Cseke spent a few months in Brighton in 2012, in order to observe the life of the residing, populous Hungarian community, and get inspired to make new related artworks. He has direct experience of the motivations of the migrants, what kind of promises led them to leave their country, and also that the start of a new life is often an ambiguous question.

The artwork titled Adjustment is a course installed on the wall, where a polystyrene sphere circulates on discarded furniture slabs, plexi tubes and file-folders. From the null point two ventilators propel the sphere upwards. The sphere leaves the starting point, but never reaches the ideal resting place, the top, the part which is highlighted with an aura of light. Instead the sphere falls back on cardboards, and finally goes back to the origin. In some cases the sphere falls out of the system, causing the viewer to interact, as the viewer can put the sphere back on the course. The artwork symbolizes the idea of limitless opportunities, which often prove to be false. In certain social and economic situations the work seeker has to restart in his profession or even change professions – end even with this his success is not guaranteed.

Sustainable Development is an ironic metaphor for economic growth and its limited opportunities. The wall mounted object has two ventilators that blow air into the “cushion sheets”. Before the cushion would explode, the larger ventilator overpowers the smaller one, causing the object to deflate, the air leaving the system through the smaller ventilator. The other ventilator takes over again as soon as the cushion is on the verge of deflation. The artwork creates a kind of pulse between the minimum and the maximum. The artwork fills up the exhibition space tightly leaving only a narrow space for visitors to navigate through the exhibition room.

The complementing artwork for the spatial installation is The Good Shepherd, which is exhibited here as a mural. The plotting board is exhibited as a classical, constructivist composition.

There is a unified use of light in the case of the three mural objects: they have their own light-source, which casts cold, alienating light throughout the exhibition rooms.

The artwork which lends its’ name to the exhibition was made with a very exquisite technique. The artist applied paint that dries rigid on a foil surface, using a threaded stem and an intubation tube. These arranged the paint due to their profile into neat strips. After the paint dried the artist crinkled the foil, this resulted in the paint falling off at certain places. The artist fixed the detached paint into a colourless acrylic paste on furniture slabs. The end result is a unique, abstract pattern, which is led by chance like human fate. The detached paint can be likened to the migrant, who settles in a new context that is capable of supporting him. Also there is paint that sticks easier to the crumpled foil and which does not „migrate” to a new surface.

Szilárd Cseke, Fade Out Lanes

26 May 2016 – 2 September

Balassi Institute, Brussels

The objects, paintings and video works presented in this exhibition all deal with issues surrounding identity crises during migration. The title Fade Out Lanes indicates tension, and it alludes to a hostile in-between situation, from which the migrant looks for an exit. The title also points to the act of bringing quick decisions in order to leave his current situation quickly. This is similar to when the driver has to switch lanes at the end of a fade out lane.

The piece Dual Identity is made using acrylic tubes, polystyrene spheres, two ventilators and an electronic control system. There is a horizontal tube suspended from the ceiling, which has a two-way switch that makes a sphere move from one end to the other with the help of air currents. The shadow of the moving objects on the white wall is an integral part of the artwork.

The artwork titled Good Shepherd consists of a plotting board installed on a trolley table. On the surface of the table ventilators create air currents, which move pong-pong balls through a labyrinth. The oval course, which has been made from plexi boards and everyday objects like CD-cases and drainpipes, has a hole where the balls can fall out. After falling off the board the balls carry on falling on the lower shelf of the trolley table and end up rolling around the room. The exhibition visitor has a chance to collect these stray balls and put them back into the system. This resembles the biblical parable, where the good shepherd goes after the lost sheep. The art piece is illuminated by a system of neon lights, which combined with the see-through materials and the metallic surfaces create a unique aura of light.

The exhibition unit Spaces consists of a three-channel video artwork, and the two painted canvases that were a direct result of the film. These were created in relation to the introductory art piece that represented the work of Szilárd Cseke and Hungary at the 2015 Venice Biennale. This exhibition was titled Sustainable Identities. The two paintings and the video art work from Spaces forms a unit. The paintings were first exhibited in Brussels, the video was made public at the website of the biennale.

In the short film white polystyrene spheres are in front of a white canvas and are spray painted with white and black colours. The spray stains the spheres and due to the propelling momentum created by the power-gas, the spheres leave a mark on the surface of the canvas as well. Certain balls stick to the canvas because of the paint, other spheres collide, leave a trace on each other or even stick together. The orbit of these spheres creates an abstract pattern, which is based on chance, just like human fate. Also on the white canvas only the black colour stands out, and this shows the persuasive power of context. Looking at the divided screen the visitor can see that the video was shot from different camera positions. The recorded action which results in the video is also represented by the actual exhibition of the two paintings including the spray paint and the spheres. This artwork can be regarded as process art, but here on the contrary of the tradition of process art, the artwork rises above simple self-reference, or the reference of the art making process, and also raises large-scale social issues.

The paintings at the exhibition at Brussels were made using a special method. The artist applied paint that dries rigid on a foil surface, using a threaded stem and an intubation tube. These arranged the paint due to their profile into neat strips. After the paint dried the artist crinkled the foil, this resulted in the paint falling off at certain places. The artist fixed the detached paint into a colourless acrylic paste. The end result is a unique, abstract pattern, which is led by chance like human fate. The detached paint can be likened to the migrant, who settles in a new context that is capable of supporting him. Also there is paint that sticks easier to the crumpled foil and which does not „migrate” to a new picture.

On the paintings which lend the title to the exhibition the paint is applied vertically. In the case of the series Faces, the paint is applied in a portrait-like format. The shape can be recognised as a back figure, which according to Tillmann József „shows almost everything: the shape of the head, the posture, the place where the body is (…) it makes the character traits of the depicted visible. Only the face remains hidden.”[1]

[1] Tillmann J. A.: Körvonalaink kirajzolódása, in: Pannonhalmi szemle 2015/2. https://muveszetelmelet.wordpress.com/2015/07/02/tillmann-j-a-korvonalaink-kirajzolodasa/

Szilárd Cseke, It Went Too Far

14-24 September 2016

Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Epreskert, Parthenón-Frieze Exhibition Place, Budapest

Central to the exhibition Gone too far is the notion of stepping over borders. The associations play a key role in this exhibition: the conscious and premeditated experience of approaching the border, the moment of reaching the border, and going past it. Border crossing can happen on many different levels, this includes crossing borders on a personal level, on a social level or even on a political level. Disregarding the norms of society happens due to the loss of control, and also due to the lack of proportion and orientation. To understand the following questions the relativity of norms play a key role: in different human societies there are different systems for what is considered normal, or normative. This topic can be linked to migration and identity crises through the issue of inequalities in society. This is a central question for the artist in many other works of his as well.

The site-specific installation adapts elements from the artists’ 2015 exhibition at the Venice Biennale, titled Sustainable Identities. Wall to wall and above eye-level there are four foil tubes installed in the exhibition hall. Due to the propelling motion created by ventilators installed inside the tubes, one polystyrene ball per tube rolls from one end to the other. The balls roll at a different pace in the different tubes.

Szilárd Cseke, Illusion of Progress

7 June 2012 – 20 January 2013

Park Gallery, MOM Park, Budapest

The project gallery of Park gallery is placed above one of Budapest’s most exclusive shopping centres, Mom Park. This roofed community space, which is an atypical place to show art, has an advantage of reaching a larger audience, than a museum or gallery exhibition. Szilárd Cseke planned his site-specific installation the Illusion of Progress so that it can be viewed from different points in the building. From the ceiling of the hall sixteen discarded car tires are suspended in a circular shape. In every car tire there is a polystyrene sphere that is propelled around inside the tire with the help of a ventilator. This is illuminated with strip lighting. On the floor electric cables are placed at random, and they all connect to a control cabinet. The automated time switch de-electrifies and restarts the system from time to time, causing a moment of chaos; the light goes out, and the air current propelling the spheres stops, but this is not enough to cause the circular motion of the spheres to stop. The contrast between the shopping centres perfectionist environment and the discarded materials used in the artwork is very striking.

The movement within the car tire is a closed system and presents only an illusion of progress. There is a palpable sense of a progress happening, but the options for progress is very limited. The ironic title raises the question of what we actually experience when emerging ourselves into the installation: do we experience the progress itself, or simply the illusion of progress? Further expanding on the associations which can be connected to the artwork, the viewer can connect the artwork with the illusions generated by politics and media, or even the way different world-models work.

Szilárd Cseke, Good Shepherd, 2013,

fluorescent tubes, electrical fans, steel, plexi, 110x200x120cm

Collection, Ludwig Museum - Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest

The artwork titled Good Shepherd consists of a plotting board installed on a trolley table. On the surface of the table ventilators create air currents, which move pong-pong balls through a labyrinth. The oval course, which has been made from plexi boards and everyday objects like CD-cases and drainpipes, has a hole where the balls can fall out. After falling off the board the balls carry on falling on the lower shelf of the trolley table and end up rolling around the room. The exhibition visitor has a chance to collect these stray balls and put them back into the system. This resembles the biblical parable, where the good shepherd goes after the lost sheep. The art piece is illuminated by a system of neon lights, which combined with the see-through materials and the metallic surfaces create a unique aura of light.

KUNSTHALLE MANNHEIM

10/12/18 to 02/03/19

Ten years after the peak of the global financial crisis in 2008, which profoundly shook the economic systems of America and Europe and had a lasting effect on present-day life, this topical exhibition is the first to illustrate the economy’s dramatic influence on art and to make global comparisons, demonstrating these in an analysis of two separate eras. Economic phenomena in the classical modernism of the 1920s and 30s are not only explored by focusing on art from the German Weimar Republic, the Soviet Union, and the United States, but also juxtaposed with artists of the present day.

Curatorial team: Dr. Eckhart Gillen (Berlin), Dr. Ulrike Lorenz, Dr. Sebastian Baden
Project Lead: Dr. Inge Herold, Assistence: Lisa Valentina Riedel, M. A. mult., Elisabeth Bohnet, M.A.

Artists participating 2008-2018

Maja Bajevic - BBM (Observers of Operators of Machines) - Bureau d'Études - Claire Fontaine - Jacques Coetzer - Abraham Cruzvillegas - Szilárd Cseke - Chto Delat - Jeremy Deller - Simon Denny - Tatjana Doll - Harun Farocki & Antje Ehmann - Thierry Geoffroy - Andreas Gursky - Thomas Hirschhorn - Olaf Holzapfel - Sanja Iveković - Charles Lim Yi Yong - Maha Maamoun - José Antonio Vega Macotela - Tobias Rehberger - Oliver Ressler & Dario Azzellini - Mika Rottenberg - Superflex - Zefrey Throwell - Volume V - Maya Zack - Artur Żmijewski

http://www.kuma.art/en/constructing-world-art-and-economy-0

Kedves egyetemi polgárok, kedves látogatók!

Köszöntjük Önöket a Moholy- Nagy Művészeti Egyetem megújult Campusán, ahol különleges térinstallációkkal találkozhatnak. A Spaces, a Phrasing, a Sustainable Identities és a Let it shine! alkotások jelzik az intézményen belül születő és nemzetközi fórumokra is kijutó kortárs művészeti eredményeket. Az első két évben Benczúr Emese és Cseke Szilárd munkáit fedezhetjük fel. Mindketten részt vettek a világ legfontosabb kortárs művészeti eseményén, a velencei Képzőművészeti Biennálén, miközben tevékenységükkel szorosan kötődnek egyetemünkhöz. Az önálló entitással bíró alkotások általánosan szemléltetik azt a gondolati és alkotói teret, amelyet hallgatóink, oktatóink, munkatársaink és vendégeink együttesen folyamatos mozgásban tartanak. Mindeközben ezzel az egyetemen évtizedek óta zajló kortárs művészeti gyakorlatokra és participatív oktatási módszerekre is utalunk. A fény-tér-mozgás-hang elemei, a tradíció és innováció összefüggésében, az állandó és a változó keretei között kommunikálják Egyetemünk szemléletmódját, adnak finom látvány-impulzusokat a jelenlévők számára.

Kurátor: German Kinga

Cseke Szilárd: SUSTAINABLE IDENTITIES

hely-specifikus térinstallációja az identitáskonstrukciók és fenntarthatóság fogalmai köré szerveződik, miközben egyetemünk oktatási módszerére is utal. A fóliacsövek rendszere 2015-ben, az 56. Nemzetközi Velencei Képzőművészeti Biennále Magyar pavilonjában absztrahált gondolati teret formált és jelentős nemzetközi visszhangot váltott ki. A pavilon interaktív terének kialakításában MOME oktatók és hallgatók vettek részt.

A tér falai közé kifeszített fóliacsövek identitáspályákként is értelmezhetőek, amelyekben programozott elektronika és ventilátorok által mozgatott gömbök sodródnak. A pályák lehatároltsága jelzi, hogy identitásaink, tevékenységeink az adott társadalmi, kulturális közeg által meghatározott kereteken belül alakulnak, miközben a gömbök folyamatos mozgása a megújulásvágy, a reflexiók energiájának állandó pulzálását adják vissza. Cseke Szilárd az egyéni, lokális nézőpontokat globális összefüggés-rendszerekre utalva modellezi le.

„Szilárd Cseke builds on a specific tradition within kinetic art which uses the poetry and dynamism of movable parts in mobiles and environments in order to create images of thought for complex social, economic or ecological processes.” (Fritz Emslander)

Cseke Szilárd: PHRASING 

2021, interaktív falkorongok

A MOME könyvtárának közelében kihelyezett falkorongok a MOME és a Bauhaus identitásaihoz köthető fogalmakat, kutatási alapelveket, az oktatásban használt alapanyagok szavait rejtik. Két további korong már szerepelt az 56. Velencei Képzőművészeti Biennále magyar pavilonjának belső udvarában, MOME workshopon született és mindennapjainkat meghatározó fogalompárokat, identitástípusokat valamint fenntarthatósággal kapcsolatos szópárokat tartalmaz. A hatodik korongon olyan egyéniségek nevei pörgethetők ki, akik a Bauhaus tanárai, hallgatói voltak és máig példaképeink között ismerjük el őket. A fogalmak megtalálásában a művészen és kurátoron kívül MOME alumnik és kollégák vettek részt.

Cseke Szilárd: SPACES     

2015-2017, loopolt videó

Lukács Mihály közreműködésével

A Terek videó első verziója az egyenlő hozzáférés igényével először az 56. Velencei Képzőművészeti Biennále honlapján jelent meg. A most kiállított verzió manipulált képi egységei golyókra kívülről érkező, alig látható impulzusok hatására történő mozgássávokat mutatnak be. A város felől érkezők egy átmeneti, tükröződő térben találkoznak a nyitott kérdések egyikével: vannak olyan energiák, amelyek ugyan mozgás-tereket nyitnak meg, de túláradásuk lelassuláshoz vezet? Esetleg pont ez szükséges az alkotás képességének kibontásához?

German Kinga

Options for dealing with your debts

Standard breathing space lasts 60 days and you can only get it once a year. You will need to: work with a debt adviser to find a long term debt solution. report any changes to them, such as if you find a new job.

Breathing space a period of rest in order to increase strength or give you more time to think about what to do next.

Breathing space a period of rest from a busy or difficult situation in order to get your energy back or give you more time to think about what to do next.

Troubled companies have a 28-day breathing space in which they can reorganise their affairs.

Culture, tradition, and outworn customs have relegated her to a dark corner, and therefore her life in the city gives her visibility and a breathing space.

All in all, this gave the government some breathing space to develop a new policy package as regards incomes policy for the (semi-) public sector.

Cambridge University Press & Assessment

Szilárd Cseke's first solo exhibition in the gallery of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Barcsay Hall, Budapest.

The exhibition series is entitled: Nine Debutants from Pécs

6 December 1994 - 12 January 1995

Curated by Dóra Maurer

Nine debut artists from the University of Pécs

The historic turning point in Central Europe in the early 1990s had a major impact on contemporary art and provided an opportunity for reform in art education. Ilona Keserü, professor of painting, and her colleagues founded the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Pécs. Commissioned by the new Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Pécs, the painter Gyula Konkoly was able to start a free-form class with an open-minded spirit. Konkoly returned to Hungary from emigration in Paris after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The results of the previously non-existent, open-minded artist training and the performance of the students in the new training structure soon attracted the interest of the Hungarian art profession. Dóra Maurer, professor at the University of Fine Arts in Budapest and curator of the university gallery, praised the artistic achievements of Konkoly's students at the University of Pécs. Dóra Maurer therefore invited nine Konkoly graduate students from Pécs to present their latest works to the Budapest audience in successive solo exhibitions.

The series of exhibitions contributed greatly to the renewal of the slowly changing art education at the Budapest University of Fine Arts.