Wächter Dénes

The Godot Gallery cordially invites you.

to the vernissage of the exhibition titled “Wächter Dénes Kártyanaptár”

On 2005 November 16 at 20 o’clock.

Dénes Wächter: Wide canvas

The artist presented himself with his last solo exhibition two and a half years ago. The extraordinarily refined, labour‑intensive canvases demonstrate the meticulous craftsmanship characteristic of nineteenth‑century painting.

Wächter Dénes: Attack

Dénes Wächter creates his almost uniquely Hungarian post‑pop, post‑op art paintings by colliding and weaving motifs, figures, patterns and styles from the most varied contexts. Without prejudice, he draws on memories from his childhood’s elevated and popular art, balancing them with further layers of more intellectual adult imagery by applying new layers of paint. His style blends the humour and irony of pop‑art, the unsettling illusionism that disturbs the senses, the decorative figurativism characterising domestic painting of the 90 years, and the Dada collage technique.

Wächter Dénes: Blue Rectangle

His art is characterised by tolerance. By painting side by side, he places the American pin‑up girl, Röltex‑Pannit, the NDK sewing machine, baroque putti, the Christian Sun Symbol and Moorish ornamentation on an equal footing. Just as the images, concepts and memories that are kept above or below the surface of consciousness never truly part, Wächter’s pictures playfully become tangled, mingle and melt together, with the various figures intertwining. Thus his work can also be read as a psychological state, reflecting a distinctly millennial, collage‑like mental condition. In his recent images the primary element it is built upon is the familiar and widely collected card catalogue. Viewed with a modern eye, nostalgic pieces once formed part of the restrained advertising campaigns of the socialist era; today, in Wächter’s kaleidoscope, they represent just a handful of glass specks.

Wächter Dénes: Gold Cutting

The exhibition is open until December 3. From Tuesday to Friday it is open 10 to 18; on Saturday it is open from 10 to 13.