Sziládi Mónika: Szélessávú vevők

Short listing

An exhibition revived from the original WordPress archive of the Godot Gallery.

Full exhibition text

Untitled (Ribs)

The Godot Gallery warmly invites you and your friends who live in New York.

Monika Sziládi

Broadband receivers / Wide receivers

for the exhibition titled

Opening: 2010. March 19‑th at 20 o’clock.

Opening: Nemes Attila, curator / Kitchen Budapest

Viewable until April 24

Untitled (Chain)

Wide Receivers (Szélessávú Vevők)

In recent years, what has attracted interest is how consumer lifestyle influences the development of personality. American commercial culture – now worldwide – offers the individual an opportunity for superficial rebirth in outward appearance, while at the same time encouraging imitation of clichés defined by advertising and mass media. These clichés partly replace, partly supplement, and partly confuse the institutionalised behavioural norms of the pre‑mass‑media era.

The images for the Wide Receivers (Szélessávú Vevők) series were taken at social gatherings – receptions, dinners, talent‑search competitions, fashion shows, house parties. I assemble collages from these digitally captured photographs, using the description of group dynamics as an excuse to ask whether participants are influenced by the instant archival gestures and poses they copy. Do they find a way to express themselves or merely adopt templates? The exhibited works thematisise the tension and contradiction that exists between the apparent freedom of individual self‑definition and the compulsion to imitate pre‑made poses.

I think of the photograph partly as a picture that describes the world subjectively, and partly as a tool that manipulates the viewer’s constructed reality of the world. I am interested both in the possibility of the snapshot or street photography and in the pre‑set “tableau” with its performative character. The hunt for meaning that almost seems miraculous in the picture and the thrill of the hoped‑for result or of surprise both occupy me as much as the visualisation of pre‑coded meanings.

Monika Sziládi

Untitled (Bar)

Mónika Sziládi (1974, Budapest)

2010 MFA, Yale University School of Art

2008 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Gesso Foundation scholarship

1997 BA, Art History and Archaeology, Université de Paris IV/Sorbonne

Selected group exhibitions:

2009 Photo Biennale, ICA‑D, Dunaújváros, Hungary

Market Forces (Peter Scott, curator) Carriage Trade Gallery, New York, USA;

Erna Hecey Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

Glam Shackle & Spice (Eun Young Choi, curator) Gallery SATORI, New York, USA

2008 Designations (Gabriela Galati, curator), NT Gallery, Bologna, Italy

2007 Fotóbiennálé, ICA-D, Dunaújváros, Hungary

Lost and Found (Dr. Fritz Emslander, curator), Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden‑Baden, Germany; MODEM, Debrecen, Hungary (catalogue)

2006 Domestic Reptiles (Ágnes Berecz, curator) 2B Gallery, Budapest, Hungary; A.I.R Gallery, New York, United States of America

Point of Purchase (Gretchen Wagner, curator), D.U.M.B.O. Arts Centre, New York, USA

Untitled (Smile)

Further information about the artist and earlier works can be viewed on his website: http://msziladi.com

Untitled (Pledge)

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