Szombathy Bálint: Processes
Bálint Szombathy is a central and internationally significant figure of the new Yugoslav art generation that emerged in the late 1960s. His work has spanned a wide array of genres and media over the past decades. From the outset of his career, Szombathy has bridged historical avant-garde and Neo-avant-garde movements, making continuous and radical reflection on questions and challenges related to politics, identiy and history a key component of his art.
Schedule
The exceptionally dense exhibition at acb Attachment simultaneously reflects on the early stages of Szombathy’s career through a selection of his iconic works, while also re-evaluates his oeuvre and the reality around us today by showcasing newer pendant pieces. A unique feature of the exhibition’s historical tableau is the inclusion of rarely seen rubber-stamp works that the artist created in Berlin during the year of German reunification. Szombathy’s exhibition—as well as his entire body of work —highlights his flag works, which embody his artistic strategy based on over-identification and deconstruction.
Bálint Szombathy, recipient of Munkácsy Mihály Award of the Hungarian State, was a founding member of the Subotica-based Bosch+Bosch Group (active from 1969 to 1976) and served as graphic and art editor of the now-legendary Új Symposion journal in Novi Sad in the early 1970s and again in the late 1980s. After relocating to Hungary in the 2000s, he led the Magyar Műhely Gallery and edited Magyar Műhely Magazine in Budapest.
acb Gallery
Founded in Budapest in 2003, acb Gallery has consistently grown in the past two decades establishing itself as one of the leading actors in the Hungarian and Eastern European art market. Initially, the gallery’s focus was on Hungarian and international emerging and mid-generation neo-conceptual artists, who became active after the political changes in the former Eastern Bloc in 1990. Since then, the gallery has expanded its focus, and now represents numerous Hungarian neo-avant-garde artists who have left their mark on art history since the 1960s and 1970s, as well as members of the youngest generations beside the already established ones.
Since the autumn of 2022, acb runs three exhibition spaces: the main gallery space, acb Attachment, which serves as a project space, and acb Plus, dedicated to large-scale solo and group presentations.
acb’s research and publishing department, acb ResearchLab was founded in 2015. This platform within the gallery aims to fill the gaps in the reception and publication of Hungarian neo-avant-garde and post-avant-garde oeuvres by studying bodies of works and art phenomena previously treated as peripheral.
The gallery holds significant importance within the global art market, actively promoting its artists nationally as well as internationally and engaging in art fairs, such as the Art Basel in Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach, the Frieze Masters London or the ARCO Madrid.
