Artist: Martin Chramosta
Exhibition title: Aper
Venue: Horizont Gallery, Budapest, Hungary
Date: October 28 – December 2, 2020
Photography: Dávid Biró, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Horizont Gallery, Budapest
Hermits are mountain people. They want unity with nature. While wandering around they look for „the other“ – they collect „the substance“. The organic melts into the inorganic. A temporary shelter, a recycled lay-by is built. There is no decoration in this place, only scarcity on the walls – a reflection of the landscape.
The APER-state is an act of carrying, piling and clearing. The APER-space is a tough one. The catalogue of substances first appears under the white veil after the frost and the thawing. Fence residues, wired promontories, prey, plunder, frozen cement pillows – mementos for the lack of otherness.
On the Wanderung in the outside APER-space the glaciers get tired and bow, they become frail and turn into palms on the fences by the new-freezing-time. From the fences new gates arise. The hermit starts to redraw the shelter. In the outline of the wire, the mountains merge with the plains, they create new images: axes with the bird’s wings, palms with the tulips, name plates of the handcraft-tools with the wire-gingerbread-hearts.
The hermit’s ceramic palms unite burned baroque reflections and weird folklore traditions. They are the gauntlet to overproduction. Reworking, re-welding the residues into neo-symbolisms. APER is the Hungarian „clean room”, the decorated space of absence, where the hermits give it up to be without snow, where with the dry lines and from their savings and with their gauntness they might build a home in the end.
Kinga Tóth’s text-associations for Martin Chramosta’s exhibition „APER” – with a special thank for the personal talk.
Note from the Artist
„Aper“ is a rarely used german word from the alpine regions. It means „snow free“.
The exhibition „Aper“ examines a hypothetical „outdoors“ in the rooms of Horizont Gallery. In the presentation, found objects from public space engage with handcrafted applications. Ceramics and works made from scrap metal add symbolist layers to the environmenal statements and generate a visual narrative with ingredients from art history, alpine and central european regionalisms, artisanal expressionism and superstition. – Martin Chramosta
Martin Chramosta (*1982, Zurich CH) studied at Institut Kunst of HGK Basel, at Skulptur und Raum, University of applied Arts Vienna and at Freie Klasse of the Academy of fine Arts Vienna. Selected exhibitions and performances include Kunsthalle Basel, Kunsthaus Baselland, Belvedere21 Vienna, LLLLLl Vienna, Rinomina Paris, NCCA Kaliningrad, Humboldtgalerie Berlin, Konstmuseum Uppsala,Swiss Art Awards. Martin Chramosta was Artist-in-Residence with the Landis+Gyr Foundation in Budapest, at the StAir in Graz (Austria), the Quartier21 Vienna, the Cité des Arts Paris and the Fonderie Darling in Montreal.In 2017 Martin Chramosta received the Kunstpreis Riehen and in 2019 the Werkbeitrag of the Kunstkredit Basel. Martin Chramosta works mainly in the fields of sculpture, drawing and performance.
