Barna Péli Portfolio

Barna Péli_portfolio

T r a i n i n g a n d S t u d i e s :

1 9 9 4 – 2 0 0 0 Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, Department of Sculpture

S o l o e x h i b i t i o n s :

2 0 1 1 Thick Milk, Dovin, Budapest2 0 1 0 Art Fair Budapest (Dovin), Budapest2 0 0 9 Winged Octopus, Dovin, Budapest2 0 0 8 The Last Chinese (with Attila Galbovy), Tűzraktér, Budapest2 0 0 1 Manus (with Attila Galbovy), Little Warsaw (41. Hajós street), BudapestHorseradish (with attila Galbovy), Little Warsaw (41. Hajós street), Budapest2 0 0 6 Urnamental (with Attila Galbovy and Gergő Kovách), Tűzraktér, BudapestChess clinic (with Attila Galbovy), Factory, Krems, Austria2 0 0 5 Technological Story (with Attila Galbovy), Studio Gallery, Budapest2 0 0 4 Delegation (with Attila Galbovy and Gergő Kovách), Trafo Gallery, Budapest2 0 0 2 The Big Judas Ear (with Attila Galbovy), MEO, Budapest

G r o u p e x h i b i t i o n s :

2 0 1 3 Kick-off, Studio Gallery, Budapest2 0 1 2 What is Hungarian? Contemporary Answers. Kunsthalle, Budapest2 0 1 2 Art Cologne, (Dovin), Köln, Germany2 0 1 2 Art Paris Art Fair, (Dovin), Paris, France

he Graduate Students at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, Department of Sculpture. Új Művészet, Budapest, 1997/10-11

2 0 1 2 Art Market Budapest (Dovin), Budapest2 0 1 1 Symptomatic Presence, Dovin, Budapest2 0 1 1 Artplacc, Tihany2 0 0 9 Latch, Dovin, Budapest2 0 0 9 Pixels, Ernst Museum, Budapest 2 0 0 8 Exits, Travelling Propaganda Exhibition2 0 0 7 R.I.P. Tűzix, Budapest2 0 0 6 @rc. Budapest2 0 0 6 Cowparade, Budapest2 0 0 5 Opening Exhibition, Tűzraktér, Budapest2 0 0 3 Bad Boyz, Kunsthalle, Budapest2 0 0 1Sculpture and Beyond, Kunsthalle, BudapestCream, MEO, Contemporary Art Collection, Budapest20th anniversary of the Beszélő, Zrínyi Press Hall, Budapest1 9 9 8Sylvie Moreau Gallery, Bistriţța, Romania1 9 9 7Per Se, Sylvie Moreau Gallery, Cluj, RomaniaShooting starts, Exhibition Room of the Budapest Gallery, BudapestPlein-Art-5, Contemporary Arts Festival. Open Air Sculpture Park, Ráday street, BudapestPlastica Dreams – Sculpture after Installation, Kunsthalle, BudapestChoir, Vasudvar, Kapolcs, Valley for ArtsAfter dreams, Hattyúház, PécsThe Gallery’s New Acquisitions, Gallery Paks, Paks1 9 9 5 Gesture, Barcsay Hall, Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, BudapestChaos, Institute for Contemporary Art, DunaújvárosExhibition of the Derkovits Scholarship Winners, Ernst Museum, Budapest

BARNA PÉLI ( 1972 , Oradea, Romania)

http://dovin.hu/barna-peli/4241-barna-peli-thick-milk.html

http://dovin.hu/barna-peli/4241-barna-peli-thick-milk.html

A r t W o r k s i n C o l l e c t i o n s :

MEO – Contemporary Art CollectionGallery Paks, Paks

A w a r d s a n d S c h o l a r s h i p s :

2 0 0 4 Derkovits scholarship2 0 0 4 Klára Herczeg award (junior award winner with Attila Galbovy)2 0 0 0 Lipót Herman award

B i b l i o g r a p h y :

Szilvi Német: Sakkrendelő revisited. Balkon, 2012/2.http://inexhibitionblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/sakkrendelo-in-dovin.htmlKrisztián Grecsó: Our Family Life. Balkon, 2010/2.László Győrffy: The Last Chinese. Balkon, 2009/1.Lehel Paksi Endre: The Author Discovers the Meaning of Sculpture in the Art Work and Starts to Propagate it http://ecindex.c3.huLászló Fejős: New Developments at the Gallery Paks. Echo, Pécs, 2003/3.László Százados: Their Brain is in Operation. Műértő, Budapest 2004/2.Anikó Erdősi: The more Unforeseenable Decisions in the Less Time. http://exindex.c3.huKrisztina Dékei: Lamb, Clouds. Bad Boyz. Balkon, Budapest, 2004/1.Dóra Romek: Delegation. Új Művészet, 2004/4Krisztina Dékei: Green Book. http://exindex.c3.huZsófia Bán: Guide Book. Hey kids, Have You Ever Seen a Judas Ear? Műértő, 2002/4.Krisztina Dékei: Picturesque History of the Last 20 Years. Beszélő, 2001/12Noémi Fórian Szabó: Chess Clinic. Balkon, Budapest 2001/5Ádám Szabó: Sculpturer Degree 2000. Exhibition of the Graduate Students at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, Department of Sculpture. Új Művészet, Budapest, 1997/10-11

http://inexhibitionblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/sakkrendelo-in-dovin.html

http://inexhibitionblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/sakkrendelo-in-dovin.html

http://ecindex.c3.hu

http://ecindex.c3.hu

http://exindex.c3.hu






× Barna Péli: Sociomosis, 2013/studio








With the exhibition ‘Sociomosis’ Barna Péli is featured for the third time in the gallery program with a solo show that will furnish the space with a mass scenery. The subjects of this crowd are poliuretane-bodied figures or innovative characters made of pressed sponge. The neology of the exhibition title refers on the one hand to the ‘social’, the aspect of which is hard to avoid when around 23 figures are present (the ‘circa’ goes for the ongoing process of creating at the time of the writing). On the other hand we get the osmosis as a standard, according which principle the substances aspire towards filling the space in equipartition. The homology is fulfilled in a special method attributed to Péli’s practice for some time, namely he eliminates the linear readeability of a possible narrative, which leads to the dethronement of the authentic, both on the level of the story and each figures. Due to the temporal unraveling of the many stories encoded in a figurative character, their physical appearance is bound to adapt to this alternations, following the distracted story lines, the flexibility of which creative process is secured by the material usage of the trash aesthetics. The opinion that since Macheray critical theory emphasises the diversiveness of the artworks and the fundamental break in their structure after which they are no longer unified or organic, but a lumber-room for disrupted subsystems, random materials and all sorts of impulsis - forms a perfect diagnosis how Péli’s practicing art.

Getting back to society, an optional segment or concentrated density of which Péli displays with his 23 characters, we get that human resource in a Hobbesian sense that gets transformed into a “political body” through reshaping, marshaling and integration. The unintended politics in Péli’s works may get ground from the feature of pop culture that in the random linking of the signifiers torn apart from their signified still kept some memories of their original or classical referent. More specifically the 'classical' signifiers like the gesture of showing the hand, the kipa or the erotic, open legs - virtually Christ, the Jews and Courbet - are linked together with other signifiers in a spacial and temporal distance of the former, by altogether resulting in the genre what we call collage in the high, and mash-up in the low culture, making the differentiation even more complex. In this method the mental evaluation never arrives to a point, where it can rest, instead prefers to work intertextually, jumping from one node to the other.The new figurativity in Hungarian sculpture after the millenium may compensate for that post-socialist phenomenon, that rendered ideologic political rhetorics to the moulding of figures. The postmodern works rather on irony with its characteristics to turn everything inside-out, and the tale it narrates in its fragmentations is rather a mirror to the zeitgeist, than mere didactics. Szilvi Német

× Barna Péli: Kick off, 2013/Studio Gallery

× Barna Péli: Kick off, 2013/Studio Gallery

× Barna Péli: Auditory, 2012/studio

× Barna Péli: Ape, 2012/studio

× Barna Péli: Thick Milk, 2011/studio




× Barna Péli: Thick Milk,2011/studio

× Barna Péli: Thick Milk, 2011/Dovin Gallery, Budapest











× Barna Péli & Gergő Kovách: Trust, 2010/Kunsthalle, Budapest

× Barna Péli: Sprinter, 2009/Dovin Gallery, Budapest

× Barna Péli: Family, 2009/Dovin Gallery, Budapest

× Barna Péli: The big tossers and turners, 2009/Dovin Gallery, Budapest

× Barna Péli: Ape, 2009/Dovin Gallery, Budapest × Barna Péli: Robespierre, 2009/Dovin Gallery, Budapest

× Barna Péli: Still Life, 2009/Dovin Gallery, Budapest

× Barna Péli: Headswinger, 2009/Dovin Gallery, Budapest

× Barna Péli: Untitled, 2009/Dovin Gallery, Budapest

The artist duo of Attila Galbovy and Barna Péli has been working together since around a decade. They keep performing their ambitious experiments to register the incomprehensible, in which sculptural elements grow into rhizomatically structured installations, so creating a sort of auto-reproductive organism that contaminates the given space. This set of materials lacking any center or “supervisor” keeps on growing narrow and coming loose, than spreads around by shooting mutated info all around. You need a subconscious-edited dictionary to puzzle them out. This creative studio operating as a productive chaos serves as an unrestricted platform for media, material and form accumulations (network of projections, drawings, sculptures, accessories) hold together by a dissonance-inspired laugh. The transgressive laugh of Nietzsche and Bataille, that warns to recognize the limits of the subjective or the termination of God, as “some fundamental aspects of the world can only be accessed through laugh”. This laugh is echoed in the latest exhibition organized in Dovin Gallery, though with different accoustic conditions than before: the space of the gallery temporarily eliminates the processes of entropy and maniac recycling, by breaking down this non-linear story into isolated scenes.

The exhibition named Winged Octopus is now only linked to Barna Péli, thus it misses its usual workshop character. By all means, the figures - alike animation characters coming to life - move strangely in their determined new home space. It seems to me, as if material accumulation protects these speedy transforming entities against their inner deficit: gaudy clothes, insulation stripes, concrete casts, gum and PUR foam - all synonyms not necessarily for disposability or lightness, but for poesis. Following that method the material that gets transmuted in the artist’s hand, from time to time takes the form of (once) existing people, like of Róbert Ferenczi (Robespierre). The members of the family aee not connected through any formal resemblance, they are only the outputs of fantasy and distress. The creatures of Galbovy-Péli are the homelesses lurking in the shadow of the tower blocks constructed by the panels of aesthetics, who bring the term abject (low and outcast) close to the sphere of high art - this mentality that deconstructs dichotomies and endangers cultural orders is the very substance of the even more radical mental relation to Pélis, Paul McCarthy. László Győrffy

The solo show of Barna Péli in the Dovin Gallery - with the usual artist partner, Attila Galbovy - is an unbroken continuation of their formal work. In the focal point, there stands still the human body constrained in impossible sculptural compositions, mostly made of the less precious materials, installation garbage (polystyrene, insulation stripes, PUR foam). In the space of the gallery, the figures lay around scattered or stand puzzled, stiffed in sculpturally and also humanly impossible, rather animal-like positions. Their body parts appear - like in school-book illustrations - strongly miniatured or blowed up: the artiste of amazing pectoral muscles performs his equilibrist exercise leaning on the three times bigger than life-sized head of its unterman partner, the spindle-legged father figure of the Family blows PUR foam towards his children while sitting on his heels, a red head ends up in a chair below its neck. Beyond their poses and proportions, the rest of the characteristics of the figures also contradict the basics of the former sculptural canon. Under their accoutrements - some raunchy cloths or colourful insulation stripes reeled around their legs - the figures seem light and hollow, the urge for touching them is the last thing that comes to the viewer’s mind. The characters familiar from nightmares - or especially the nightmare of Tony Oursler or Chris Cunningham - stand, lean or lay frightfully but even fragile and unstable in front of us, far from each other, in the consoling neighborhood of pillars, window pits or walls. In the center, near a pillar there stands with exaggerated headed dwarf figure of Robespierre,

with his hand folded, slightly open legs in gymn shoes, rose trousers and a stretched rose-patterned, striped shirt. He looks in front of him with his inlaid green eyes, could possible be a real portrait, although it does not resemble to the true Robespierre. It stands out with its classical portrayal from the rest of the freaky creations, its gesture could also refer to a power demonstration in a tavern, as to his penitence before the guillotine. If we look in his eyes, the radical Jacobin has become a hesitant pocket-Robespierre, a misshapen figure in the circus. In fact, these all are just noticeable when abstracted from the other figures, otherwise in the row of the anti-sculptures, Robespierre is also just a show with forms. The circumstance of the works here can not be neglected, as the sculptural ensemble is not shown in an alternative exhibition room and is not a part of a collective exhibition of young sculptors, but is placed in a commercial gallery, where arte povera, the surrealistic incertainity and the twist on the forms and materials of the classical sculpture is given an other perspective. The difference in perception would normally go together with a sharper view on dichotomies, still it does not happen: the bizarre, animation film-like forms and compositions alien in the field of traditional sculpture are absorbed in the shiny space. Sculpturally speaking, the human body is played back in the assemblage, and in the place of serious experiments we get strange performances that could be even noted as decorative from this point of view, light-weighted, fragile artiste.

Chris Cunningham - stand, lean or lay frightfully but even fragile and unstable in front of us, far from each other, in the consoling neighborhood of pillars, window pits or walls. In the center, near a pillar there stands with exaggerated headed dwarf figure of Robespierre, with his hand folded, slightly open legs in gymn shoes, rose trousers and a stretched rose-patterned, striped shirt. He looks in front of him with his inlaid green eyes, could possible be a real portrait, although it does not resemble to the true Robespierre. It stands out with its classical portrayal from the rest of the freaky creations, its gesture could also refer to a power demonstration in a tavern, as to his penitence before the guillotine. If we look in his eyes, the radical Jacobin has become a hesitant pocket-Robespierre, a misshapen figure in the circus. In fact, these all are just noticeable when abstracted from the other figures, otherwise in the row of the anti-sculptures, Robespierre is also just a show with forms. The circumstance of the works here can not be neglected, as the sculptural ensemble is not shown in an alternative exhibition room and is not a part of a collective exhibition of young sculptors, but is placed in

a commercial gallery, where arte povera, the surrealistic incertainity and the twist on the forms and materials of the classical sculpture is given an other perspective. The difference in perception would normally go together with a sharper view on dichotomies, still it does not happen: the bizarre, animation film-like forms and compositions alien in the field of traditional sculpture are absorbed in the shiny space. Sculpturally speaking, the human body is played back in the assemblage, and in the place of serious experiments we get strange performances that could be even noted as decorative from this point of view, light-weighted, fragile artiste. József Mélyi

× Barna Péli & Attila Galbovy : The Last Chinese, 2008/Tűzraktér, Budapest




Text



To be the last Chinese - in the face of the latest demographic index - is the break-down of civilisation, the certain indicator of the morning after the Apocalypse, a kind of deadly joke and impossible situation, one convincing reason for suicide. If we take the solipsist viewpoint and accept the center of the universe to be our consciousness, a 25 mm cartridge targeted at our temporal lobe would be just enough for doomsday. The artist duo of Attila Galbovy and Barna Péli is a walking oxymoron for eight years by now, as representatives of the individually collective thinking in the Hungarian contemporary art. Their playfield being a mysterious, cerebral workshop in a permanently transitional status, where they communicate as different centers of a communal brain. From time to time, guest artists can also get channeled into this complex -networked energy bed, if disposed of the right frequency jack. Every momentum of the so born, immensely eclectic and co-ordinated sculptural installation piled up of multitudinous materials is a hyperlink, which - to a click - navigates us to an other reference. In these site-specific works the ephemeral use of materials appear in a quality similar to the experiments of Urs Fischer or the parody of simulation and grotesque dissonance to Paul McCarthy and John Isaacs, the biggest common denominator still being the autocracy. In fact, all the comparisons are superfluous and misleading: the psychotic associations of the Galbovy-Péli duo operate in their own right. The key factor of their work is laugh, that is the first reaction to the absurdity of existence, half way between the can guffaw of the dead in the soap operas and the insurrectionist laughter addressed to the Creator. In their activity, primarily the Freudian interpretation is manifested, in which “joke stands as the contribution of the unconscious sphere to humour”.

According to Tanya Barson, curator of Tate Modern, laughter stands outside of the verbal register, though can be linked to some verbal functions as stammer, thus becoming an essential instrument of repetition, which sticking to the present excludes the possibility of development. Galbovy and Péli created a language that recyclically is feeded from its own self, only the elements of which are accessible, the rules not. Thus being alienating and familiar at the same time, with the correct proportion to excite its viewer. The cultural center of the Tűzraktér itself operates as a multifunctional organic being, its constituents being exchangeable at any moment. The barrow of Péli-Galbovy has just arrived from the storage room of the common memory doomed to be selected, transporting in the projector the Future’s present to get to know finally what hides in the deep of the Brillo box: the copy of the copy of the copy. In the darkness of the spirit’s total shortstop, the only light comes out from the one person cell of the box, where there is a sitting figure in pullover that has just blown his brains out: his feet made of concrete, his facial expression apathetic - not resembling a Chinese at all, but recastable at least. All being so unreal and plastic, that could even be real, like the blood puddle on the ground or the visual reflex projected on the wall through the box right from the head of the figure: half drawing, half slide image, the moment after the last, the beginning of the end, that from now on, lasts forever. Most of the Péli-Galbovy installations are miracles of entropy due to their prolifical collague-aesthetic: they reach at a total disorder in any given space. The duo of Péli-Galbovy managed to detach the illusion of endurance from the term ‘sculpture’, and perfectly materialize the thought itself, according to the rules of the pop culture the figures getting about with the speed of a three dimensional cartoon character. László Győrffy

× Barna Péli & Attila Galbovy : Chessclinic, 2006/Krems, Austria




× Barna Péli & Attila Galbovy & Gergő Kovách: Urnamental, 2006/ Tűzraktér, Budapest








The exhibition is an installation equipped in a space larger than a living room joint to the groundfloor hall in the buiding site behind the facade. The furniture adjoint to the wall on the left and standing still and devided into smaller pits on the right was given, plus a mysterious ditch, that does not look like going by the furniture, and by showing up the whole artwork's interpretational key goes down in the deep at the left hand corner. The spontaneous pipeline architectural additive urges for a more serious survey due to the strong lights let down at several places. This causes everything, and its darkness is forced into light by the artists. The contra entity of our statutorily pouring dirt is the uncovered upper part, where in immaterial ligh, through a slide show projection the upper world gets manifested. I prefer to keep away from describing the upper part (marked by the images of a red car and a double-smiled woman cut out from a magazine) as demagogue, as the rest of the installation is so damned psychotic that these two meanings in the high are simply unable to work as kitsch. These three guys are state-aided, qualified sculptures, all of them even patronized by the Derkovits scholarship. Inbuilt in the present installation they have re-used their former figures, as usual. The statues are consistently of human size: their limbs and bust made of PUR foam blew into stockings, their face being a separate application. The artists apply plaster masks casted from each other’s and their friends’ faces, painted with wild colours and strange joinings. Figures reach their final form by the addition of wings and used dresses, so are created the almost absolutely true-like pseudo humans, at least for the peripheric sight. If the wig is extensive enough, face is not even needed. One bump into faces not merely in anatomically reasonable contexts, but also like at the end of a rolled carpet or at the top of a gigantic lighter with adjoint colourful flappers. They are terribly grimacing. The preparation of the characters balances at the edge of wanting to express something, by determining a minimum.

The same sampling technics works in this loose creative community that in the electronic dance music. A particular moving stage is created, a reality theatre in a standing image. The cabling of the space serves only for the operation of the lights, there is no kineticism, only still motion, which shocks exactly for being that lifelike. The feverish instincts raging from the preservation of race to preservation of life are represented by baroque intensity metatypes, which - staying close - blacks each other out. It is almost badlam-like, how much the protagonists of the steadies of the walk do not respect the people of taste. The word-puzzle title of the exhibition reveals: this is an actualpolitically engaged show. Apart from several “people” standing in different cabins being occupied with diverse stuff, there is also a plexi urn located on a table next to a gnome sitting in the centre of the space. With eye-catching papers inside, similar to the donation boxes in shops. The case of the first “voter” (the wigged faceless) for example is noticeable, he is busy with gazing himself in the mirror, still somehow he does not have a face, his mirror image is a plaster mask of a man, and the mirror is a Persian carpet. The pit seems rather to be a drain as one character by the door of a cabin below whom there is the pit is standing in a position of taking a leak. The triad division of the space is identifiable according to the orthodox up-down-middle approach: 1. below the ground secret causing power, 3. glittering top consuming projected picture as beyond one’s reach fancy, 2. as nightmare reality. The work stretching in the whole space is too friendly familiar and human in this form, therefore the artists tuned it up with an alienating effect in the front wall, which - alike the opening speech - copies the artistic method of the work in an other genre. Here we get the whole installation again in secco technics, half comics-like, its black and white style in reading direction continues in a right surrealistic drawing, and ends up in colourful action splotch. Endre Lehel Paksi

× Barna Péli & Attila Galbovy : CIAOS, 2005/ ICA-D, Dunaújváros

× Barna Péli & Attila Galbovy : CIAOS, 2005/ ICA-D, Dunaújváros

× Barna Péli & Attila Galbovy : Technological Story, 2005/ Studio Gallery, Budapest

× Barna Péli & Attila Galbovy : Technological Story, 2005/ Studio Gallery, Budapest

× Barna Péli & Attila Galbovy: MANUS, 2001 / Hajós street [Little Warsaw]

× Barna Péli & Attila Galbovy & Gergő Kovách & Róbert Ferenczi & Ádám Kokesch: Delegation, 2004 / Trafo, Budapest




× Barna Péli & Attila Galbovy & Gergő Kovách: MUS, 2003 / Kunsthalle, Budapest

× Barna Péli & Attila Galbovy & Gergő Kovách: MUS, 2003 / Kunsthalle, Budapest

× Barna Péli & Attila Galbovy: Nietzsche and Detary, 2002 / MEO _ Contemporary Art Collection, Budapest

× Barna Péli & Attila Galbovy: The big Judas’ ear, 2002 / MEO _ Contemporary Art Collection, Budapest

× Barna Péli & Attila Galbovy: The big Judas’ ear, 2002 / MEO _ Contemporary Art Collection, Budapest

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Barna Péli Portfolio