Bukta Imre - Műveljük kertjeinket - Godot Intézet 2022 november 26 -tól 2023 augiusztus 27.

Short listing

For English scroll down.

Full exhibition text

Please provide the Hungarian text you would like translated.

The Bukta Imre exhibition at the Godot Contemporary Art Institute attracted more than 20 thousand visitors.

The exhibition titled “Cultivate Our Gardens!” showcases the work of Imre Bukta, the most influential contemporary Hungarian visual artist whose impact is also significant on an international scale. To celebrate the artist’s birth in the year 70, the show presents only new works. Bukta conveys the world that surrounds him in rural Hungary through a perspective grounded in the latest techniques. The exceptional event will run at the four‑storey exhibition space of the Godot Contemporary Art Institute in Óbuda for a little over 1000 2 and will be open until the end of August 27.

Unique visiting opportunity for schools.

The last 10 years ago, Bukta Imre – a leading figure in contemporary Hungarian visual art – unveiled an equally significant exhibition in 2012. The professional press had eagerly anticipated the hall‑based event, and it proved indispensable for the general public as well: since then no other contemporary exhibition has taken place.

In Hungary, which would have attracted more visitors.

Why is this exhibition regarded as special in Hungary? One reason may be that the Godot Intézet is staging a show of exceptional scale at a time when most domestic exhibition spaces are temporarily shut due to the energy crisis. However, the event is particularly outstanding from an artistic point of view: partly because of the high aesthetic quality of the works, and also because the exhibition’s message is currently relevant. The pieces were created specifically for this project; the seventy‑year‑old artist painted more than fifty canvases for the show and produced a number of new installations that can only be seen here – custom‑fitted spaces built in accordance with Western‑European and American practice, just as they were a decade ago at the Műcsarnok.

Curator Gábor Gulyás said that the themes addressed by the exhibition units are certainly important to many people:

“What does the experience of rurality mean today, the relationship to nature, how craftsmanship can be lived out, how values sink into oblivion, what causes the difficulties of finding a home, how we can confront mortality, why creation and making are so important to a person? Bukta Imre’s works reflect on these questions with the tools of fine art, creating nuanced and rich layers of meaning.”

the curator highlighted it.

The most influential master of contemporary Hungarian visual art, and a figure of international standing, lives and works in the village of Mezőszemer in Heves County. Bukta Imre, 1952, has taken part several times at the Venice Biennale, exhibited at the São Paulo Biennale, and his works have been shown – among others – at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Bozar in Brussels, the MűvészetMálom in Szentendre, the Landesmuseum in Linz, the Jyväskylä Art Museum, Lundi Kunsthall, and the Beijing Millennium Museum. His first monographic exhibition was organised by Debrecen's MODEM in 2008. His largest exhibition to date opened in the Műcsarnok in November 2012. The current exhibition also reflects on that exceptionally successful project; both were curated by the same art professional: Gulyás Gábor, a philosopher, aesthete, former director of the Modem, the Műcsarnok and the Ferenczy Museum Centre, now an independent curator.

Let us cultivate our gardens!

BUKTA is open to visit: from 2022 November 27 to 2023 August 27. Opening hours: Tuesday‑Friday 14:00 to 19:00, Saturday, Sunday 11-19. Godot Contemporary Art Institution

Budapest, District III

Adolf Fényes Street 21

Tickets

The exhibition of the year at the Godot Institute in Budapest!

exhibitionoftheyear.hu

The Godot Institute has another surprise exhibition waiting for us. The combination of a unique venue and the works of the fantastic artist Imre Bukta could make this the most exciting exhibition of the decade.

Godot ICA – How to get there?

The exhibition titled “We Must Cultivate Our Garden” at the Godot Institute of Contemporary Art extends art beyond painting into the spatial dimensions: the unique moving sculptures, video works, illusion‑inducing projected spaces will engage all our senses.

All of these familiar objects provide a far from ordinary visual experience, courtesy of Bukta's peculiar symbolism.

For ten years the Hungarian public has not seen an exhibition of this kind – a so‑called “constructed thematic” exhibition, largely in line with its content – except for those who have had the chance to visit Vienna or Paris.

Wandering around the more than 1,000 square metres of exhibition space at the Godot Institute in Óbuda, we can see site‑specific installations, or rather visceral revelations that affect our minds and senses, on key issues of life such as ageing, death, sacrality and humans’ relationship with nature.

The title of the exhibition – We Must Cultivate Our Garden – is a manifesto, a warning about the fleetingness of life and the necessity to care. The profound meaning and countless nuances which the 70‑year‑old Bukta presents are expressed through a distinctive perspective, subtle humour and perhaps even more self‑irony. The artist selects moments of rural life, often seemingly insignificant to others, with an unrivalled subtlety, as if they were unfolding on the pages of a Marquez novel translated to Hungarian conditions. This is how we cultivate our gardens here, even as certain values disappear, traditions are transformed, but gravity and the cycle of nature bind us to the land. Perhaps this is the land that has now moved to the capital, where even the tomato soup that spills onto your plate is an unmissable experience.

The most influential and internationally significant master of contemporary Hungarian art lives and works in Mezőszemere, a village in Heves County, Hungary. Imre Bukta (1952) has exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the São Paulo Biennale, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Bozar in Brussels, the Landesmuseum in Linz, the Kunsthalle in Lund, and the Millennium Museum in Beijing, among others. His largest exhibition to date opened in November 2012 at the Hall of Art (Műcsarnok) in Budapest.

Venue: Godot Institute of Contemporary Art

1036 Bp., Fényes Adolf Street 21

Cash desk entrance tickets – card, cash, euro

Open to the public until 27 August 2023

Opening hours between 11 AM and 7 PM / Closed on Mondays

godot.hu

Press contact