Artists: Milán Kövics, Marcell Menyhárt, Viktor Rónai
Exhibition title: Postplastic
Venue: Horizont Gallery, Budapest, Hungary
Date: September 6 – October 4, 2023
Photography: Dávid Biró / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Horizont Gallery, Budapest
In contemporary art, we are living in a period where traditional artistic paradigms are breaking down, making space for new and innovative forms of expression. “Plastic” here doesn’t just refer to artistic materials but also to artistic styles and forms that are reshaping and adapting to our changing world. In the past decade, trends spreading through the renewed communication space have turned individuals’ characteristics inside out, grinding down the psyche in a society where abundant information fills the user with uncertainty and despair. This dual, uncertain state of being manifests in the widespread prevalence of computer games. The easily accessible, alternative results, outside of physical reality, easily pull the user into a pseudo-beautiful reality where the false appearance of success becomes the defining factor. The same characterizes the image flood of social media platforms, their streamlined, false, parallel reality. The leakage of this parallel presence into the actual, physical space is what truly makes the term “post-plastic” relevant. It creates a dual reality where the ideals, filters, and trends of the virtual space also define the visuality of physical reality. This way, a renewed visual world and a falsified state of being become plastic.
