Artist: Ádám Ulbert
Exhibition title: Fort he forthcoming epoch for the salamander
Curated by: Peter Bencze
Venue: ENA Viewing Space, Budapest, Hungary
Date: September 19 – November 15, 2020
Photography: © Aron Weber, all images copyright and courtesy of the artists, Everybody Needs Art
“…New cultures always start with fire regulation.
The salamander became the general thermostat for this novel swampland.
Although this reconciliation paid by the eucharistic act of self sacrifice. Offering the body for hosting was the salamander’s personal climate catastrophe.
He was close to the invincible sun that gives without receiving.
The untouchable lotus root body of the salamander became a telluric sun.
In the era when daily sacrifice is no longer a general human routine,
the salamander holds the potential to be a new post-solar deity…”
Ádám Ulbert: For the forthcoming epoch for the salamander (artist book,2020)
„With this piece, much like my previous works of mine, what I am mainly interested in is how a certain natural phenomena is culturally interpreted. How culture serves as a domesticating force over nature. And often how this strive for domestication of nature fails. I’m curious about belief systems, cultures and times that are dealing with the problematics of intuition, transgression, non binary thinking, or the implosion of the conscious anthropocentric strata. In situations where the problem of taming nature – by nature I mean both physical and metaphysical natures – don’t succeed and creates tales instead of certainties. I find it fascinating how often in these moments of shattered or collapsing states, our human-ness starts to share ontology with the ‘other’ more-than-human entities – like animals, plants and minerals. „
Text: Ádám Ulbert
