Virtual Exhibitions

Unerasable Communism
April 11, 2002 - May 28, 2002

In conformity with my artistic interpretation of secondarily produced reality, in my newest series of the socialist period I have used the propaganda photos, printed matter and special technique: the idyllic and heroic lie topos of the Soviet epoch in Hungary as the most effective bearers of the Communist idea of kitsch are painted by eraser and the pictures are destroyed by eraser as well. The pictures, the ideas shown on them, the social practice and the political as well as cultural general taste born by the ideas are the unerasable negative traces of the epoch. By painting and erasing them I wish to share the aesthetic experience of getting rid of these traces with the public. Károly Kelemen painter

 
The Millenary Exhibition
December 31, 2001 - February 28, 2002

Our new exhibition focuses on the millennial events, programmes and works of art that received public funding in Hungary. This is the only exhibition so far that has tried to give an overall picture of the kinds of official programmes and centrally sponsored works that were created on the occasion of the millennium. To collect this material, we turned for help to the state institutions that organised, subsidised and documented these events, including the Millennium Commissary Office, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, the Religious Editorial staff of the Hungarian Television, Duna Television, the Hungarian Radio, the Hungarian Post Office, the Coin Trade Joint Stock Company of the Hungarian National Bank, the Office for the Protection of Historic Monuments (previously the Committee for the Protection of Historic Monuments) and the...

 
Bodies in Formation
May 17, 2001 - July 29, 2001

Salvo. With a deafening roar fourteen thousand soldiers ran through the gates of Prague's Strahov Stadium, the biggest stadium in the world, covering an area larger than eight football pitches. They launched into a performance which drew gasps of admiration - and sometimes fright - from the crowd. The musical accompaniment built up to a crescendo as a huge five-cornered star formed from their bodies with the corners spreading from the stands on one side to those on the other. In the middle of the star a soldier climbed the pyramid of human bodies. He spread his arms wide, raised his eyes to the sky and from the Strahov Stadium, the "hymn of the working people" - the Internationale - sounded over Prague.

Performances such as these were typical of the Czechoslovak Spartakiads. They were some of the most spectacular mass gymnastic...

 
Chicago - New York
March 29, 2001 - April 30, 2001

This exhibition of more than 150 black-and-white photographs represent a cross section of the thousands of significant buildings that are protected by local landmark designation in Chicago and New York City. The story of how this came to pass is both as similar and as different as the cities themselves.

The preservation movement in both cities was, in large part, a response to demolition threats that occurred to significant structures during the building boom of the post-World War II years. For New Yorkers, the call to action as the 1963 demolition of Pennsylvania Station, a Beaux Arts masterpiece designed by McKim, Mead & White (1902-04). Two years later, New York City passed legislation that would help protect other significant structures from demolition or damaging alteration, establishing the New York City Landmarks...

 
Angkor - The Lost City in the Jungle
September 6, 2000 - October 8, 2000

Upon hearing the name Angkor, many of us have vague recollections of giant statutes of gods and temples overgrown by the jungle, standing as monumental remnants of the long-vanished dynasties of Cambodia, a faraway country ravaged by war in its modern history. Angkor was the capital of Southeast Asia’s  largest kingdom, the Angkor Empire, from the 9th century until the 15th century. The empire had its golden age in the 12th century, when Angkor had nearly one million inhabitants.

The most famous building complex of Angkor is the Wat, which occupies about one thousand square meters of ground. Its builders used more stone to construct it than the Egyptians used for all of the pyramids. After the collapse of the Khmer Empire in the 14th century, the capital became deserted and, apart from a few short...

 
The Siege
February 13, 2000 - April 28, 2000

The exhibit is not only a commemoration of the events that took place 55 years ago, but, as we embark on the new millenium, new and never before seen photographs, documents, propaganda materials of the age, posters, flyers and period newsreels paint a picture of the incidents and circumstances which have been either largely forgotten or forbidden to remember.  The exhibit portrays the events and developments of the siege, the participants, the Soviet, German and Hungarian army operations, the military commanders, the military and political background of the situation, the daily routine of the besieged city, the Arrow Cross propaganda, the opposition stemming from various personal or political convictions directed against the Nazis and the Arrow Cross, as well as the organizers and members of the Jewish-rescue missions.

The...

 
The Note
July 6, 1999

“Through the coincidental coming together of historic events those listening to the arguments in the legal protest in Parliament passed a slip of paper from hand to hand with news of János Kádár’s death.” MTV 1.  News. July 6, 1989.

On July 6, 1999 at 9:17 a.m., the occasion of the tenth anniversary of a historic coincidence,  Centralis Galeria would like to invite you to a recollection of the chance event.

 
Gulag
May 1, 1999 - May 30, 1999

In the 20th century twice as many people died at the hands of their own government as in wars. The end of the millennium is near, but the human catastrophes of our decade are not yet over.

The topic of the exhibition titled “Gulag” is time: the ruins of a slave empire and “glorious achievements” acclaimed in the past form an astonishing contrast in  the artistic photographs of Thomas Kizny and the archival pictures of various Russian archives.

“Russia is full of strange sights.  One step away from habitations will bring you face to face with the vestiges of a singular civilization.  Overgrown canals, unfinished roads, abandoned mines and factories, barracks falling to ruin, mazes of barbed wire, the stubs of watchtowers…  Remnants of a great slave empire.”  -- Writes...

 
Ten Years of Freedom - 1956 in Hungarian Hisorical Thought
January 28, 1999 - February 27, 1999

This upcoming exhibition in Galeria Centralis will be unusual in the sense that instead of exploring a historical event such as 1956, it will try to present the fruits and efforts of such exploration done by various individuals and organizations, without any commentary or interpretation.  The exhibition will feature all 1956-related scientific research work, monographs, studies, bibliographies  and source listings by Hungarian authors that were published after 1989.  The publications will be categorized based on the most commonly occurring topics in the research of this era.  The activities and history of individual research centers will also be presented, when relevant and necessary.

The exhibition will function as a reading and research room, where visitors can study the printed and electronic literature...

 
The Representation of the Counter-revolution
November 5, 1996 - December 1, 1996

The topic of the exhibition was the Kádár regime, from a special, but not at all a marginal point of view.