OFF the SKIN
For the exhibition, we have selected drawing projects by tattoo artists who we felt accessed their patterns primarily through their own distinctive inner worlds, but this time the focus is not on the end of the needle, but on the other side.
Schedule
"The most important story of human evolution is the process of the emergence of human-like, closed, cooperative groups (...) Group culture is a shared, social construct in the creation and functioning of which all members of the group participate (...) In early group cultures, however, the individual was only able to express himself as part of the group culture. Partly because his socialization was undisturbed, he learned to think of himself in terms of what the group culture required of him, and partly because early groups were closed and had minimal contact with outside groups. (...) In the evolutionary process of culture today, 'the individual does not behave as a member of a community, a group, a culture, which takes for granted, desires common actions, constructs, accepts common beliefs and is loyal to its group, to its culture, but behaves as a single-member group, as a single-member culture'*.
According to Vilmos Csányi's ideas on One-person Cultures, the individual is increasingly at the centre of globalizing societies, where the individual is constantly attempting to redefine himself. The links with a particular group, culture and their value systems, beliefs and visual narratives are loosening, and the desire for self-expression is becoming stronger. The individual can construct a private mythology that is canonised by him/herself and in many cases has the need and the possibility to objectify it.
Traditionally, tattooing was a way of making belonging to a group public, where the person who got the ink under their skin testified to an internal acceptance of a collectively created system of meanings and symbols. This ritual is also being reinterpreted in modern societies today, and in many cases the focus is on the tattooist who shapes his or her private mythology to fit into the canon of another single culture.
The opening will start at 18:00, with music by Papp Mukunda, live drawing, sketchbooks and the opportunity to scribble down zines to match the exhibition.
The exhibiting artists are:
István Kárpáthegyi - csokpista
Márton Bence Töki
mimcza
Dávid Icko
Réka Kovács - rekartattoo
Áron Dimén
Karolina Müller - toyota.karolla
Stef Bin
Ráhel Gáti
Luca Rødhette
Gergő Bódor - kurafitattoo
Lukács - i_could__do_that
Tímea Piróth
*Vilmos Csányi: One-man Cultures