In the depths of the material | group show

József BAKSAI, Domonkos BENYOVSZKY-SZŰCS, Vince BRIFFA, Áron GÁBOR, Bíborka Lina GACSÁLYI, Christoph MAYER, Márton ROMVÁRI

In the 1960s, Canadian media researcher Marshall McLuhan formulated the proposition that the importance of the communication channel or medium is not secondary to the content and cannot be ignored: "the medium is the message" he argued in his 1964 book. * Thus the idea that the medium determines the content, if not being directly part of it, is not new, and perhaps its application to the visual arts is not new either.

While contemporary visual art, at the same time, has completely shed its attachment to the medium and its formal constraints, granting the artist complete freedom in the way of physical and technical realisation, focusing more on the message, the medium is still not excluded from the formula, but becomes a space for artistic expression and content. The medium - which can be equated with the material, the technique or even the entire creative process - is neither obvious nor accidental, but is consistently chosen for a reason.

The exhibition In the Depths of the Material brings together a selection of artists and their works where, although differing from artist to artist or even from work to work, the medium is in a great manner part of the message, seeking connections within the content.

Whether we are talking about ballpoint pen drawings or objects enclosing memories, touching on the notion of passing, or life path captures lying in pieces and partially reassembled, mixed media paintings reacting to the physical fragility of paper, evoking inner and outer layers on cardboard, even by deteriorating the surface, or depicting concrete seismological measurements, all of these become coherent and understandable content-wise only through the combination of materials and processes used.

* McLuhan, H. M. (1964) Understanding media ; the extensions of man.

Artists: József BAKSAI, Domonkos BENYOVSZKY-SZŰCS, Vince BRIFFA, Áron GÁBOR, Bíborka Lina GACSÁLYI, Christoph MAYER, Márton ROMVÁRI

Curator: Ferenc Domokos