Installation for Venice Design 2018
"The Budapest Metropolitan University is Hungary’s largest privately owned institution of higher education; established almost twenty years ago and marked by dynamic growth, its international presence is also gaining momentum. As it presents inventive works by the students of the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries, the installation at the Venice museum of design makes use of the means of contemporary art to highlight the flexible, creative structure of the whole institution, along with the innovative model of education that is meant to respond to the challenges of the 21st century.
Designed specifically for the exhibition and the space available in Venice, the installation of the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries has conceptual links with theme of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of Venice, Freespace, and how it can be created in material and non-material forms. Lyonel Feininger’s print, which served as the cover design for the manifesto of Bauhaus, the centenary of whose establishment will be in 2019, represents a Gothic cathedral in a spatial structure, and in association with the school, it suggested a medieval type of master-disciple relationship: it highlighted the utmost importance of collaborative thinking and action in the design of large, impressive structures. Creating an ethereal mood, the complex grids allowed room and freedom of movement for the intellect and the imagination, with their mystical, light-delineated spaces based on intricate calculations, suggesting a model of the universe. The community of the university forms a cognitive and creative collective in a like manner.
The task at hand was to create a site-specific installation that could represent the whole of the university while accommodating individual works, those of the students. Its innovative structure designates and holds together the spaces of the separate works, which appear in non-material forms. It is a firm, but freely reconfigurable structure that offers a broad playing field for the imagination, creativity, and the recipient. The starting point was Össztűz (Fire), a public art project led by artist Ferenc Koleszár, who teaches at the university: with their “controlled pyromania,” the brick structures of the project paid tribute to the horrifying-entrancing beauty of fire spreading, a metaphor for primordial fears. The Venice exhibition uses only the building material, without the fire, and thereby also reflects on historical Italian brick architecture. The medieval church of Pomposa or the complex, decorative texture of the walls of the Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio are echoed by the contemporary concept, which contrasts positive and negative, figurative and non-figurative, two- and three-dimensional solutions. But while the medieval (brick) reliefs exhibit frightening monsters, floral or animal motifs, the installation features an overarching symbol of our time, the robot. The thematic selections from the students’ diverse works appear in this brick installation, in non-material forms."
Gabriella Uhl Phd
About Venice Design 2018: www.palazzomichiel.org
