Dusty Doodles
Mátyás Erményi’s Solo Exhibition
acb Plus, Budapest
04. November – 09. December 2022
Text: SHOAP COLLECTIVE
Installation Shots: A. Tóth Dávid
Do you have fire? Stoves have been reignited by the crisis of our current economy, as the cavemen did before the millenials. I vividly remember the warm, greenish-brown fireplace like a rosebud: flowering in my grandma’s living room, pollinating ash onto a patterned carpet. The fireplace-creatures here have legs and are lopsided, waltzing similarly to Miyazaki’s friendly monster from Howl’s moving castle. Erményi’s entities seem to be on the brink of toppling over, but should they?
We easily forget the fireplaces that have resided with us: the log burners, the furnaces, the heaters. Returning from desolate corners to this exhibition venue, why construct a zoology of fireplaces? – They are sexy.
With a frantically laxed touch, markers sprawl on discoloured canvases that seem to bear the cracks of time. The urgent gestures dashing through the work are relevant as the economic crisis moves equally as quick, freezing local school children. Pine trees wave loomingly through the glass-imbedded portal of this private mythology. While cities have expanded, burning the flesh of wood has become old-fashioned; the art of lighting fire has been forgotten. Flint and steel has lost its appeal. Prometheus’s blessings have run out: we are moths to a flame. Is the artist crafting dizzying references to the ever-reoccurring economic crises throughout our lives? The warm and lively patterns fight against the cold white box they’ve been placed into. The naivete with which the artist approaches his collection makes one feel refined, as if looking at the drawings of a child, echoing the voices of a previous generation.




(James Magennis – Dorottya Márkus – Emmie Drummond –
Esther Marshall –
Inna Tarakanova –
Marion Sicky –
Agnes Milla Bereczki – Péter Drapkó
& various other voices who wished to stay anonymous)
