I SURFACED FROM A DEEP, SWAMPY SLEEP
In their exhibition at the basement gallery of the Vajda Lajos Studio in Szentendre, lutum (Stella Koleszár and Eszter Metzing) continue their ongoing artistic research into early childhood socialization, school as a secondary social environment, exclusionary and abusive dynamics within children’s communities, and the ways experiences of isolation, violence, and shame can persist into adulthood.
Schedule
These themes unfold throughout the installation in a subtle, metaphorical, and poetic manner.
The exhibition title is borrowed from Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963). Another key point of reference is the dual ecology of the floodplain: the layered processes of decay and decomposition unfolding beneath the surface, and the emergence of new forms above the waterline. Within lutum’s installations, soft and rigid, ephemeral and static material qualities – adobe, sand, glass, textile, and paper – are placed into dialogue with one another.
Lungs expanding again after a state of oxygen deprivation.
The dramaturgy of the exhibition draws partly from archaic narratives and feminist readings of fairy tales, in which immersion, disorientation, or bodily loss appear not as fixed traumatic states, but as transitional conditions from which new inner resources may emerge.
The basement gallery of the Vajda Lajos Studio plays a central role in this context. The vaulted, chapel-like space of the former storage room, together with the proximity of the Danube, closely resonates with lutum’s introspective and sediment-like installation practice.
Vajda Lajos Stúdió
Since its founding in 1972, VLS has been creating art in the spirit of the progressive artistic principles it proclaimed at its inception.
