Jochen Becker

In Vasarely Go Home Andreas Fogarasi investigates a double event that took place in Budapest on October 18th, 1969. Opening that day, Victor Vasarely, the internationally renowned artist of Hungarian origin, had a large retrospective exhibition at the Mücsarnok/Kunsthalle in Budapest. While Hungarian avant-garde art of that time was forbidden or at best tolerated by the authorities, Vasarely’s exhibition—organised by official cultural politics—became an important public event attracting a huge number of visitors. Because of these double standards at play, the show was met with both high expectations and scepticism from the local artistic scene. The second—undocumented—event taking place that evening during the exhibition opening was a one-person protest by artist János Major. He carried a small sign in his pocket that he discreetly showed to friends and acquaintances when he encountered them in the crowd. The sign read Vasarely Go Home.

The Vienna-based artist Andreas Fogarasi, whose work was shown in the Hungarian Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale, works in installation, video and contextual painting to investigate urban development, specific concrete institutional sites and other cultural representations. Through seemingly accidental formal interventions, he questions structural parameters, gentrification, branding and more.