Frieze Viewing Room 2020

acb Gallery presents a selection from the recently rediscovered oeuvre of Katalin Nádor (1938-2018).    While working as museum photographer in Pécs for thirty years, Nádor developed an experimental practice reflecting the visual heritage of abstract Hungarian photography, and the new constructivist, geometric endeavours of the local contemporary art scene.  Her secret artistic life reflected the fate of creative women working in countryside Hungary during the years of Socialism: her work as an artist evolved quietly, without any attention or acknowledgment from the professional scene, despite the experimental quality of her photographs. Her recent discovery unfolded in solo exhibitions at acb Gallery and the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center in 2019, resulted in a publication contextualizing her work, further international publications as well as in the acquisition of five of her works by the Centre Pompidou. Co-curator of last year’s institutional show, Róna Kopeczky selected the works for Frieze Masters - Frieze Viewing Room.   Researching the common structures of art and nature through programmed geometrical reduction, Nádor created an oeuvre that, in its forms and playfulness, stands close to the abstract and photogram-based visual investigations of György Kepes and László Moholy-Nagy, as well as to the spirit of the Bauhaus movement, deeply embedded in the cultural history of Pécs.   Creating her own experimental and lyrical artistic world based on these experiences and her sensitive observation, she would search for the abstraction in everything and focus on the nature of light, its space- and form-creating power, and the way it can transcend surfaces and textures.