At his exhibition, Szemethy Imre (Jim) presents graphic works and etchings made in the 1970s and 1980s. Gross Arnold’s former colleague and fellow artist will speak at the opening about their friendship and the times they spent together, and then the artist will lift the veil on just what sugared ink (cukrostinta) actually is.
Opening: November 16, 2017, 7 p.m. – Arnoldo Gallery
On view until December 6, 2017, Tuesday–Wednesday 10 a.m. – 9 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. – 9 p.m.
Szemethy Imre (Budapest, February 28, 1945)
Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, printmaking and art teaching program (1964–1971)
Fields: graphic art, painting, animation, criticism / graphic works: etchings and unique drawings (1971–2001) / book design work for the Magvető, Magyar Helikon, Európa, and Móra publishing houses: illustrations and book cover designs (1972–1994) / book series created and published jointly with Banga Ferenc: Képes Próza Tár (Illustrated Prose Collection) I–VII (1996–2001) / journalism, art criticism, and periodical articles: Élet és Irodalom, Mozgó Világ, Új Forrás / video animations (1984–2002) / paintings (from 2002) / habilitated college professor: Budapest College of Communication
Exhibitions: / Continuous participation in solo and group exhibitions from 1972 to 2009
Scholarships and professional awards: / Derkovits Scholarship (1972–1975), Grand Prize of the Miskolc Graphic Art Biennale (1983), Grand Prize of the Salgótarján Drawing Biennale (2000), Painting Prize of the Hungarian James Joyce Society (2006)
Art prizes and honors: / Munkácsy Prize (1977), Merited Artist (1986), Outstanding Artist (2004)
Academy membership: full member of the Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Arts of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences since 1995
Laboratory Report on Szemethy Jim’s Exhibition, or a Furniture-Discount Vision from the Realm of Hungarian Hellenism.
With a linesman’s sort of scurrying and flag-waving we may acknowledge these etchings — best appraised as rhapsodic manifestations of a recruiting spirit — and that characteristically startling conduct by which this undaunted reformer shall become, in our age of quickening pace, the latter-day herald of big-bandian theology.
In his prints — akin in their line to that of a sol-fa-singing heretic — Sz. Jim, meditating on the relation between artificial light and professional desertification, is in effect testing the drowsiness of the museum guard: in this process, the motifs scattered across the picture plane are mere props intended to set association in motion (upon the viewer of normal temperature they act as phenomena of variety-show physics, evoking the experience of compartment-smashing after a derby match).
His principle of construction and composition reflects his musical bent, and duly feigns an inventory shortage of Romantic forms. In his etchings a partly enumerative (objectoid) inclination contends with a partly naivizing counter-top quality, leaving the question to the village researcher: = What changes of temperament compel the peoples to disfigure their dwelling places to such a degree?
Nyáry Alfréd
