Texts

Visitors interviewed during the opening of the exhibition “Pseudo” (1970)

PSEUDO – exhibition by Gyula Pauer

At first I didn’t know that this was an exhibition-type thing—the form was so unexpected and unusual.

What I would have loved to ask was if this was an exhibition at all.

I feel like I am inside a sculpture, really, inside the sculpture itself, so that there doesn’t even need to be a sculpture anymore, and it no longer matters what is around me; it doesn’t matter if it is an exhibition or a sculpture, I am so inside it that I don’t care at all.

Finally an environment has been created that no one else in Hungary has managed so far. And I liked the fact that the flyers were randomly scattered, the whole thing had a casual feel about it, an extremely strong grey feeling. This is more than exploring possibilities: Gyula has definitely made a 180-degree turn, but in the best possible direction I think.

He has completely gone against everything he has done till now and it seems that this is very good as well. The only mobile part of the exhibition at the moment—aside from the people who move around in it, of course—is this rotating disc.

[…]

I believe in such initiatives, because as it is realized for two days, people come to see the concept, they pass it on, talk to others about it, take pictures of it, and then the day after tomorrow it will all be taken down. If it was twenty meters, it would still have to be taken down. So existentially it does not prevail, only the concept survives. I think this is the absolute exhibition when you don’t even need sculptures. What for?

[…]

I am a sculptor myself and I am surprised to see this.

[The artist:] I feel that this exhibition, which I have organized, has not been successful.

[…]

I feel a little disappointed. But what I wanted I have more or less achieved. I was able to point out and outline the problem. At the moment I feel uncomfortable in this environment and I would really like to get out of here. As you sit inside the space, you have the feeling that you are in the right place. The interviewer will ask me why I am in the right place. That is difficult to answer. You usually operate in the world with two kinds of impressions: you are either lost or moving in the right direction. Whenever I walk on a nice and straight path, I immediately have the suspicion that I am lost. This diverse, moving, bumpy illusion, which resembles life’s accidents, and which in the meantime is as smooth as glass, resembles the real world. And I feel good in it.


Source: János Gulyás, PSEUDO (graduation film, Hungarian Film Academy, 13 min., 1970).