By Eszter Balázs
MEMBERS of the A I R Gallery, from New York’s SoHo area, exhibit their paintings, drawings, collages, photographs and other work on the walls of the 2B Galéria on Bécsi út, while Hungarian female painters and graphic artists simultaneously present their work in New York City.
Established in the beginning of the seventies, A I R Gallery (referring to artist-in-residence, a city supported loft program at the time, as well as to women artists’ drive to take root in the then – and still – male dominated art world) has aimed to provide an exhibition space for talented female artists coming up with new ideas and realizing innovative and unusual projects. The pictures on the walls of the 2B Galéria are indeed surprising: Sylvia Netzer, for example, photographed herself reclining in front of her recent work, a carved brick sculpture inspired by Manet’s Olympia. Regina Granne created a child-like drawing with pieces of a cut-off globe, attacked by paper planes folded from the pages of history books -war is a boy’s game. Michi Itami’s photographs, show a mother and a daughter trying to trace matrilineal bloodlines. With some works better than others among the 21 tableaux, the exhibition on the whole is a fun and thought-provoking experience.
The exhibition also offers some extra excitement as it is the last chance to make a visit to a special gallery. Founded by now New Yorker painter András Börötz and his Buda resident brother László Börötz, the 2B gallery operates in the latter’s flat (hence the restricted opening hours) on the first floor of an old Óbuda style house shared by a number of families. One of these, a large Roma ensemble just sitting down to early dinner at a long table in the weedy green garden, eagerly showed us the way to 2B on the first floor. The Börötz family, sharing its home with exhibitions for four years, can soon use the entire flat for its original purposes, as 2B is moving flat to reopen in a larger space in Ráday utca in October.
The A I R Gallery of New York
2B Gallery
Buda, District III, Bécsi út 86, first floor, in the corner on the right side of the corridor.
Phone: 388-1642, 06/20 993-9361
Hours: Fri 2pm to 6pm, Sat 11am to 5pm
Until Aug 5