SOCIAL – Solo exhibition of Csaba Uglár at Studio Gallery, Budapest
Csaba Uglár’s solo exhibition focuses on the relationship between money and value.
How can value be articulated and changed into money in the area of the contemporary art-scene?
The artist answers this question by creating a narrative of an artistic value that is precisely measurable in financial terms:
Csaba Uglár transforms the gallery space into a bank lobby. The central panel of the exhibition is an enormous pile (430,000 pieces) of money designed by the artist and produced in a printing-press factory, packed in foil and shown on a pallet in the space. A red carpet, a labyrinth constructed by cordons, and the screening of current exchange rates and share prices on a plasma TV all help to create a theatrical setting for Uglár's counterfeit notes.
Visitors/collectors can buy the money, and by doing this sign a contract with the artist, who binds himself to change the notes they bought into pieces of art in the next five years. With this construction he forces people to invest in his own artistic future.
SOCIAL visualizes the doctrines and dictatorship of money in the context of contemporary art, in a situation where less and less money is being spent on visual culture. In the current global economical crisis Csaba Uglár offers fresh fictitious answers in a playful way to a challenge that is faced by both the local and the global art worlds.
