Invitation from the Paks Gallery
MúzeumCafé 4.
The poster with the zebra invites you to a disused factory – a Victor Vasarely retrospective has opened in Paks. Although the former canning factory is not such an attractive site, every tenth resident of the town had already been to the Paks Gallery in the first fortnight of the exhibition. “Vasarely entices people,” says Zoltán Prosek, director of the gallery which opened last autumn. One of the most important contemporary art collections in the country is nearly the same age as this ‘nuclear’ town. Paks regained its urban charter following construction of the local nuclear power station in 1979. The artist Károly Halász, founder of the Paks Gallery, returned to his birthplace in the same year. Half a year after the gallery’s opening it is too early to say whether the project, which aims at the visual education of Paks’ residents, is successful. But the signs are hopeful – of the town’s population of 20,000, more than 2000 have been to see the Vasarely retrospective. “Each year we organise two exhibitions which simultaneously attract visitors and help shape an approach,” says Zoltán Prosek. “The Vasarely exhibition is obviously a bait, but it also represents an important and positive message for the town. Future exhibitions will be built on this – those of András Mengyán, François Morellet and Vera Molnár.