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Opening speech: Barabási Albert-László
“Where to, there is nowhere to, everything is here, and everything is us.”
(Péter Esterházy: The Bermuda Triangle)
Péter Weiler’s retrospective exhibition in 2022, entitled It would have been a pity to defect, explores one of the most critical questions of the artist’s thirty-year journey from a personal perspective: “To go or to stay?” This exhibition is a straight continuation of that journey. Still, the artist looks at the question from a broader dimension, and to explore it, he starts dialogues with Hungarian artists and scholars who have achieved world fame.
Is it possible to become world famous from Hungary, or is it necessary to step out of the narrow bubble of home in order to be noticed by the whole world? What does patriotism mean for those who have stayed at home? How does one who has gone far remain connected to their roots? In this exhibition, Péter Weiler pays tribute to Hungarian heroes who are well-known worldwide. Most of them were forced to leave Hungary due to historical storms, but they remained loyal to their homeland until the end. “Almost without exception, biographies have in common the fact that willpower matches talent. No matter how many challenges, difficulties, and hardships they have faced, they have not given up, even if what they are doing draw strength from, so this exhibition carries a positive message.”
This current exhibition also highlights the artist’s wide use of materials. Peter Weiler is best known for digitally designed giclée prints, in which he captures the anomalies of the Kádár era or our current present through nostalgic, sometimes banal scenes. However, the artist is familiar with various media and has recently returned to classic oil on canvas paintings. These recent works are at the center of this exhibition: the sensitive, painterly expression is analogous to the richness of the psyche and talent of the people depicted. The upper space of the exhibition also features enamel works, an aesthetic similar to that which first appeared in the artist’s 2020 exhibition called Checkout, which featured portraits of famous artists from the Chelsea Hotel in New York, once owned by The Hungarians. The art-historical references of these works can be found in the experiments in enamel art of the Pécs Műhely in Bonyhád in the 1970s, so Weiler’s connection to Pécs, his homeland, is also reflected in this space.
The second room of the exhibition offers visitors an immersive experience: the works, sharply illuminated in the dim light, are the latest in the Void series, which highlights Weiler’s personal life story to explore the fading of memory, the elusiveness of home and the loneliness of being cast out into the world. The works’ visuals echo the images of old slide projectors projected onto the wall; the blank slides, the sharp light of the missing image, and the surrounding shadows lend a dramatic quality to these compositions. With these minimalist, abstract paintings, Weiler points out that whatever we choose to do, go or stay, we cannot break away from our roots, from our past, because erasing our memories and attachments leads us to a state of total emptiness, where we have no more hold on anything, and are left with uncertainty and threat.
Although the exhibition looks to the past, it is about the future. What have the Hungarians given us, it asks, that we can be proud of and that will help us remember our own country with a love that does not fade, even in the bloody centuries when there seemed to be no hope?
Katica KOCSIS
