Exhibition opening: Friday, October 18, 2019, 5 p.m.
Finissage: Saturday, November 9, 2019, 7 p.m. – screening and mini disco
The exhibition will be opened by: Rutkai Bori
Featuring the members of the Rutkai Bori Banda: Szerető Dániel, Darvas Kristóf, Nemes Janó
Rutkai Bori originally graduated as a video artist. She began singing and writing songs during her university years. She has “run” several bands in the past; at present she plays music for children with the Rutkai Bori Banda, sings in the Budapest Bár, and, together with her grown-up formation and the writer Háy János, creates literary and fine-art events. Her songs and pictures have by now become inseparable, and — returning to her original profession — she also combines her favorite genres in music videos and animations of her own directing.
Besides her storybooks with CDs illustrated with her paintings — Sárkányjárgány, Pizsamátor and Űrdöngölők — she also surprises her audience with a family calendar every year. In 2019 she produced a calendar presenting her crocheted puppets and installations, but this year she returns to painted pictures.
Bori is, in essence, a “fairy-tale gardener.” Her themes and characters keep returning: they appear in her songs for adults and for children alike, they surface in her paintings, and from their encounters ever newer tales branch off. New songs often “awaken” while she paints — in a relaxed state, immersed in the colors and inspired by spontaneous blots of paint, she gives the figures concrete form, then endows them with stories and names. The exhibition’s title painting was created with this very method: the four-member elf band born from the colorful surfaces applied to the canvas “defined itself” as the ABBA band.
In Bori’s works, humor and poetry blend delicately, with an endearing cheekiness and an indulgent playfulness that give rise to intense moods. Bori was born in January — her kindergarten symbol was the snowman — so winter themes have a particularly strong presence in her work. Evoking intimacy, turning the evening moments of everyday life into a celebration, is one of Bori’s favorite creative states and subjects. City buildings glowing against dark backgrounds, village houses, falling snow, strings of lights, and creatures painted in “high-visibility” colors populate the picture surface. Fantasy and reality coexist amicably, and from their fusion emerge creative fairy-tale spaces where adults and children alike can feel at home. The magical atmosphere of the Arnoldo Gallery and the beautiful world of Gross Arnold are kindred in spirit with Bori’s small, playful pictures, worked out with care and love. The exhibition features not only the original paintings of the 2020 calendar: the bite-sized wall also has room for illustrations made for earlier calendars, and visitors can leaf through Bori’s storybooks as well. The exhibition will be accompanied by evening projections: the tiny pictures come to life, projected in enlarged form onto the houses and pavement of Bartók Béla utca, so visitors can walk right into the tales, lose themselves in the details, and — carrying the projection on themselves — become image-makers in their own right. In October and November the preparation and anticipation for the winter holidays already begin. With these evening projections, Bori hopes to extend the mood of the pictures, to enlarge the gallery’s spaces illusively, to draw in passers-by, and to activate a passive yet potential audience as well.
At the exhibition opening, Bori will talk about how the pictures came into being, and then, together with her fellow musicians, perform a mini concert of songs connected to the paintings. The exhibition closes on November 9 with a finissage of projections and music. Art prints made from Bori’s paintings, storybooks and calendars can be purchased at the Arnoldo Gallery both during the exhibition and afterwards.
www.rutkaiboribanda.hu, www.grossarnold.com
As part of the Day of Hungarian Painting program
