Idee + Konzept: Karlheinz Essl & Michael Eather

The Ludwig Museum Budapest - Museum of Contemporary Art will show 120 photographic works from the Essl-Collection of Austria, as of the 13th of March. A group of works by nineteen internationally recognised artists on their first show in Hungary. The thematic content of the exhibition is given formal cohesion by the symbiotic merger of the pseudo documentary character typical of photo works and the staged effect of the set-up shot.

We are witness to the kind of action stills, well known in the cinema world, that act through the mediums of the exhibited portrait, street scene, architectural documentation, and body composition of nude women as the fermenting ground for “human stories” in each individual instance. In contrast to the exhibition of works Henri Cartier-Bresson shown in the Ludwig Museum last year, here it is not the decisive moment of the ‘accidental’ snapshot that makes for a narrative, i.e. the subject is not identical with the object, it is the deliberate invention of the author that is asserted in each image instead.

NAN GOLDIN Jimmy Paulette on David's Bike, NYC 1991 (1991) Farbfotografie, 41 x 60 cm © by Nan Goldin, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery (New York)

The form of the narrative is established in stories coming to life over a number of series.

Series of photographs that build on the notion of sequence as known from cinematography, have been secured from more than one artist. The series of motifs (or ideas,) expressed in film, the parallels between sequences of moving images and photo sequences (the row of images in fact,) make the identical form they take manifest. The ‘sequence’ thereby becomes a vehicle for the narration of stories.

In this respect, works by the Australian Tracey Moffatt, the French Marie-Jo Lafontaine, the Austrian Birgit Jürgenssen, or the American Nan Goldin, all possess a strong sense of narrative.

VANESSA BEECROFT VB 35.377. MS. Salomon Guggenheim Museum (1998) C-print © by Vanessa Beecroft

The theatrically arranged photos of Vanessa Beecroft are reminiscent of performance documentations from the 70s (e.g. Jürgen Klauke), where the manipulated transformation of how collective consciousness is sensed and perceived came about through the interactive play of various mediums and the personal participation of the artist.

A personal performance is replaced by a medium-collage (theatre–photo), as Beecroft gives form to a stripped-down existence. Location is of great significance in the case of Vanessa Beecroft, Tracey Moffatt and Nan Goldin. The photographic series of staged shots, relating stories both when viewed together and when viewed one by one, function in front of an actual background, either outdoors (streets, sports grounds) or indoors (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Kunsthalle, Vienna).

The exhibition will enrich the presence of contemporary art in the programme of the Budapest Spring Festival with an exciting collection of photographs.

Artists participating in the exhibition:

Vanessa Beecroft, VALIE EXPORT, Nan Goldin, Andreas Gursky, Ilse Haider, Gottfried Helnwein, Birgit Jürgenssen, Marie-Jo Lafontaine, Tracey Moffatt, Thomas Ruff, Shirin Neshat, Anne & Patrick Poirier, Lois Renner, Eva Schlegel, Sean Scully, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Struth, Rosemarie Trockel

The exhibition is supported by the Budapest Spring Festival, the Austrian Cultural Forum, the Hungarian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and bauMax Hungary Inc.