Walzer - exhibition of Magda Csutak and Miklós Erdély

Having emigrated in 1977 from Transylvania to Austria, Magda Csutak (b. 1945) and Miklós Erdély (1928–1986), both of whose ancestors had moved from Târgu Mureş to Budapest at the end of the 19^th century, organized their first joint exhibition between 17-22 June 1985 at Csutak’s atelier apartment in Vienna. The show took place in a small collective space within the apartment. Each installed an independent environment from different materials and objects in two adjacent rooms. The similarity in the two artists’ conception of materials led to an exhibition that was well thought out in terms of detail and concept, yet spontaneously composed owing to the encounter of the materials each of them used. Its invitation card featured the cross motif in the window of Csutak’s atelier. The spatial alignment (floor plan), walls, doors, and windows of the three rooms of the atelier, which had still preserved some traces of the former milieu of the “bourgeois” apartment located in Josephstadt, Vienna, defined, in the given spatial and temporal situation, the basic scheme of the exhibition, which itself was loaded with meaning, and in which the differences and similarities between the human, intellectual and artistic stances took shape (were “incorporated”). The concrete subject of the exhibition was the duality and unity of the Jewish and Christian religion and culture, but in 1985 it was impossible to use such unequivocal terms publicly.

Thirty years after the original exhibition, acb Gallery is the first to present a partial reconstruction of the two artist’s joint exhibition. Csutak has adjusted the structure of the environments to the Gallery’s space. The most important change compared to the 1985 configuration is that one of the rooms in acb Gallery has no windows, therefore the windows with the cross motifs that had become emblematic are now missing. Another fundamental difference is that in 2015 the joint exhibition is presented by Csutak alone, without the presence of Erdély – in a different, new circumstance. In addition to the cultural tasks of preservation, presentation, and commemoration, the title of the exhibition comprises a new, personal motif, the most adequate “subject” of private reminiscence: the Walzer.

Annamária Szőke, Miklós Erdély Foundation

Supported by: NKA