Mucsarnok Art Gallery

Mucsarnok Art Gallery

Mucsarnok Art Gallery, also situated in Hero Square, is Hungarys largest exhibition space for temporary exhibitions of Contemporary art and Sculpture. I really wanted to visit this gallery as it was exhibiting Photography, which would help me with my current brief.

From the outside it’s an old building similar to The Palace of the Arts, but on a smaller scale. Once you’re inside you would never guess you were in an old building (except perhaps noticing the extremely high ceilings). There were 5 or 6 large rooms housing Photography, Film and Sculpture. The walls are monstrous and very high. The floor was quite shabby and not in keep with everything else. There was hardly anybody in this place, something I put down to the time of day it was. However, the people there were students who looked interested in what was being presented to us.

‘a Polcok’ (2009)- Gabriella Csoszo

- From the series ‘Selves’ (2009)

This work was situated in the first room I entered, the images themselves were photographs taken of the Lukacs Archive, the Library of Jonas Kadar in the Institute of Political History. The photographs, which were all colour, were displayed on two walls, taking over the corner of the room. They were mounted on mdf, which had been painted white, matching the walls. The first wall housed 15 photographs in one horizontal strip leading into the corner, where another 9 photographs adorned the other wall. The photos themselves were mounted extremely close together- I’m guessing that it was to coincide with how the books, which were depicted, would have been stacked in the library. Some of the spotlights weren’t used efficiently and some shadows were cast on a couple of the photographs.

I enjoyed this work as I liked how it was displayed, I almost always prefer black and white photography, but using colour really brought out the beautifully designed book covers.

On the wall opposite by the same artist were the last photographs of the series, they were taken of the library in which the books came from. I didn’t find these photos as interesting. They were also mounted really high up on the wall, which made it hard for me to see them. And again… I’m guessing that the height was to represent the grand design of the old library… but that might just be my naff interpretation.

Below are further examples of the range of photography displays. I really enjoyed visiting this exhibition as it showed me a variety of choices for displaying work, some were very basic and I couldn't decide whether they were supposed to be that way, or the display itself had been overlooked somewhat. I thought it better to just take photos of my notes from the gallery instead of trying to describe it all. So excuse the spelling mistakes, dodgy angles and distorted perspectives...... Can you tell I'm studying art?