PERTU N° 14: Gábor Gerhes - Martin Piaček

Exhibition date: September 9–October 23, 2021
Exhibition location: Ernest Zmeták Art Gallery in Nové Zámky
Curator: Helena Markusková 

The fourteenth iteration of a long-entrenched project, titled PERTU, continues in the tracks of its precursory program aimed at discovering the analogies between the Slovak and Hungarian contemporary fine arts. The project carries on with analyzing spontaneous parallels in the works of esteemed personalities, based on the opinions, styles, themes and generations found therein. This allowed for opening up a unique communication-driven space for the two cultures to correspond and discover new contexts.
This year’s artists are Gábor Gerhes (1962) and Martin Piaček (1972). By joining forces, they compound neo-conceptual foundations, sociocritical stances, playful ironical perspectives, emblematic themes of identity myths, national histories and reflections on the role of an artist in society. In a manner authentic to them, they work with the fountainhead of art history, overstep the bounds of their medium and incorporate their personal histories into their works. The exhibition is designed as a communication play with retrospective elements. By way of correlating topics, the exhibition guides participants through different periods—from the end of the nineties to the present day—emphasizing the meeting and differing points, as illustrated by: artist self-definition, national pantheon heroes’ observations, alternative history interpretations, the absurdity of being in the Central Europe region, forms of a transcultural dialog.