BUDAPEST CONTEMPORARY ART, PART DEUX

While I try to explore new art destinations, when I recently traveled to Budapest for the second time in under a year, I took it as an opportunity to drill a little deeper into the city’s contemporary art scene.

This time, I moved away from the city center to The Ludwig Museum. The museum holds Hungary’s collection of international contemporary art. Its current location in the nondescript Palace of Arts north of Rákóczi Bridge, focuses on temporary exhibitions in the space that stretches over three floors. A new building by the amazing SANAA architects is under construction and I can’t wait to see it when it’s done. Temporary space notwithstanding, the shows did not disappoint. The Family Album, showing the emotional stories of three families impacted by the Kosovo conflict, pulls at your heartstrings and Dead Web - The End show on the first floor will make you both laugh out loud and ponder what our lives could look like if the web just went away one day. Could we handle it?

My favorite, however, was The Imaginary Cameras show highlighting the work of Tamás Waliczky. Tamás, a media artist who started his work as a cartoonist, is a multitasker. Painter, illustrator, and a photographer who went digital in 1983 focusing on spatial representation of time, futuristic renderings of augmented reality, and the examination of optical distortions. The show, which represented Hungary at the 2019 Venice Biennale, examines mechanisms an designs that inventors could use to create new picture recording devices. The stunning black and white photographs and videos of fantasy machines (cameras, projectors and viewers) captured both the photography lover and the geek in me. I couldn’t get enough and I suspect you would enjoy them as well.

Well done, Budapest!

THE LATEST COOL ART DESTINATION IN NEW YORK

Fotografiska’s Wes Anderson’esque hallways

Most of my posts cover interesting art and design destinations around the world. That said, when a new art hotspot opened right in New York, backed by a great Stockholm gallery that I admired during my visit there, I had to write a few words to welcome the opening. That new hotspot is Fotografiska.

After a long-ish wait required to complete the full-blown renovation of the gallery’s landmarked Renaissance Revival–style building on lower Park Avenue, the contemporary photography gallery finally opened its doors in mid December and my wait was finally over. And I could not be happier to have this new museum just a cab ride away.

Much like its Swedish parent, Fotografiska is not a run-of-the-mill photography gallery. Spread over six floors of its historic building, it combines a cool, laid-back art opening lounge on the 6th floor, a fancy restaurant, Veronika, on the second floor, a cool Scandi cafe and book store on the ground floor and gallery rooms showcasing interesting photography everywhere else.

As a photo portrait lover, I was totally in my element in the original Stockholm gallery, and its New York offspring did not disappoint. In the top floor lounge area, I could admire Danny Clinch’s photographs, a virtual Who’s Who of the music world, including my favorite, Bruce Springsteen.

A few steps away, down the darkened industrial staircase decorated by large photo prints that lend them a Wes Anderson-like feel, on the fifth floor, the bold, loud, passionate world of Ellen Von Unwerth’s Devotion! awaits. You can wander the dark rooms, moving from “Passion” to “Lust” to at your own pace, admiring the bold imagery that comes at you in color as well as in black and white. It will pull you in, I guarantee it.

One of my favorite shows I found on the fourth floor. Tawney Chatmon’s ”Inheritance” tackles the difficult topic of racial challenges through unusually beautiful, ornate work that doesn’t deny its Klimt-esque inspiration. I liked it more than I ever imagined I would and I suspect you will, too.

Tawney Chatmon “Inheritance”

Two additional floors cover other gems from the world of contemporary photography and works by Anastasia Taylor-Lind, Adi Ness, and the powerful landscapes by Helene Schmitz.

On the ground floor, you can lose yourself among the many books, posters and other items that photo lovers young and mature will enjoy. I may have just found my favorite new gallery spot in NYC!