Master and disciple ⁴

ILONA NÉMETH (1963)
She is one of the most prominent Central European artists of public art and post-feminism. She pursued her studies at the Hungarian College of Applied Arts from Budapest. She displayed works at the following exhibitions: Aspekten/Positionen (1999, MMK – Vienna), After the Wall (1999, Moderna Museet – Stockholm), Another World (2002, Kunstmuzeum – Luzern), Gender Check (MUMOK – Vienna) as well as at the Prague, Valencia and Bucharest biennials. In 2001 she represented Slovakia with the project entitled Invitation for a Visit at the 49th Venice Biennial. She is studio leader associate professor of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design from Bratislava; she lives in Dunaszerdahely in Slovakia. At the beginning of her career she pursued the painting of new expressivity. On the occasion of her first solo exhibition (1990) she broke with the traditional genres of fine arts and set off on the road of installation, performance and multimediality. Her unique and feminine sensitivity resulted in installations and objects with which she found her place in the contemporary artistic life of both Slovakia and Hungary. Today her installations entitled Running the Gauntlet (1994), The Column (1995), Polyfunctional Woman (1996), Private Gynecological Ambulance (1996) or Exhibition Room (1998) are already referred to in the international specialist literature. Besides the approach from the viewpoint of gender, the conflict of the public and the private spheres as well as the criticism of collective and individual consciousness have gained an ever more significant position in her art. In recent years public space has represented a challenge for her, both in its sociological and political sense. Some of her works reflect upon the current Hungarian-Slovak conflict (Mud Wrestling, 2010) and, respectively, upon the present conditions in Hungary (Dilemma, 2011).

JARO VARGA (1982)
Varga’s outputs have usually the form of a visual-documentary recording, or a transcript of the recorded, capturing a phenomenon, theme, sociological trait, which the author perceives as controversial and focuses his attention on them. Because of this, his art can in a certain way be considered as engaged – it reflects and points out the problems of all-society. Into the selected phenomena which he reflects, he projects his own doubts about its relevance. He mediates the results of his research to the viewer with an anticipation of their further resonance and the unfolding of disputable questions, which they associate. He investigates the phenomenon of experience as a spectacle, he reappraises the conventions of its mediation. A benefit of his work is the polemizing with the quality of the lived everydayness.