Group exhibition curated by Ajna Maj at the Studio of Young Artists' Association in Budapest.

PERMANENT RESIDUAL
Artists: Tamás EITER, Judit FISCHER, Sári GINK, Katalin KORTMANN JÁRAY, Karina MENDRECZKY, Tünde MÉZES, Judit Lilla MOLNÁR, Mózes Márton MURÁNYI, Zsófia SZEMZŐ, Balázs VARJU TÓTH
Curated by Ajna Maj
June 9 - 26, 2021
SYAA – Studio of Young Artists' Association, Budapest


Synthesizing perceptions of time and space

“The brain is processing parallel times. In this way, we can also interpret phenomena in which the flow of time is perceived backwards.” Detlef Linke: “The Brain”

In the endlessly uncertain and volatile state of the past year and a half, personal memory has played the biggest role in survival, alongside the Internet and online communication. The present, rendered insignificant between the four walls, has been replaced by moments of the past and nightmares of the future. In the course of the lockdowns, the layered presence of timelines and the duality and disparity that has affected our everyday perception and image of the world since the alleviations have been experienced to varying degrees, but by all.

The exhibition Remnants to Remain oscillates between real and constructed spaces, between layers of past and future. Some of the exhibited works explore everyday moments and personal experiences through emotional qualities and memories linked to material motifs. Objects act as mediators between different ages and persons, thus the associations and emotions associated with them can be recalled and evoked by the individual at any time. One of the best-known examples of autobiographical memory is the point in Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time when the taste of the famous French pastry Madeleine brings back childhood memories. Interestingly, scent-induced memories date back to early childhood, mainly before the age of 10, and are recalled much more intensely than memories evoked by photos and texts. The process of involuntary memory can be controlled by the careful selection of the objects around us. The value of an object in financial terms, or as determined by a given society, is secondary to its impact mechanism on memory. Because of its complexity, the theme is also explored in a broader context through the individual works. From constructed reality through the everyday phenomena of déjà vu and nostalgia to Bergson’s concept of time (‘creative time’), countless layers are linked to memory and perception.

The current relevance of the exhibition, which was delayed for almost a year and a half due to the virus, is heightened by the collective experience of the pandemic, to which the exhibited works indirectly reflect through the registers of memory in the system of the individual-space-time relationship. In the course of the quarantine, which has rapidly become the default position, the thesis that constancy is only an appearance and that change is the only invariant factor, has been completely overruled at the level of perception. Despite the constant flow of information and fluctuations, Remains to Remain aims to define a “fixed” point in the present and make it accessible to all.

Graphic design: Zsófia SZEMZŐ

Special thanks to Bernadett Arndt. Sponsored by National Cultural Fund of Hungary.

Photo: Dávid Biró, Zsuzsanna Simon