Perneczky, Géza: Art Bubble (1-2-3) (1972)

vintage silver print on photo paper
Purchased with assistance from the National Cultural Fund, 2020

Géza Perneczky, art historian, art critic and theoretician of the progressive tendencies in the sixties; he emigrated in 1970 and lives in Cologne. In the early seventies, he created playful and analytical concept works that focused on the issue of identification. One of the most popular and common formes of conceptual thinking about the concept of art is the use of the word itself, denoting an analytical or newer “trend” in art, as well as playing with the English word Art (or German Kunst). In one of Perneczky’s earliest works, a series of photographs called Concept like commentary, features balls with the inscription “art” and mirrors. One of the hallmarks of Perneczky’s conceptual work is the conceptual use of design (balls with the inscription art appear in dramatized scenes on stage) and sequences, as well as mirrors / reflection instead of “snapshot aesthetics”. The guide to the 1972 Art Bubble series reads: “Paint the word art on the window. Blow soap bubbles into the room. Then the reflection of the word art becomes visible on the soap bubbles before they burst.” With this gesture, he points not only to the transience of art (creation), but also to the duality and unity of the negative and the positive (mirror and mirrored, light and shadow).

Kriszta Dékei