There are no avant-garde gestures now
Dóra Maurer on the exhibition series of the Open Structures Art Society
MúzeumCafé 20.
The Open Structures Art Society has been holding a series of exhibitions at the Vasarely Museum in Old Buda for five years. MúzeumCafé talked to one of the group’s leading figures, internationally noted artist Dóra Maurer, about the events and contemporary Hungarian art of recent decades. “The Open Structures Art Society was organised by Zoltán Prosek, a young art historian who currently manages the Paks Gallery,” Dóra Maurer recalls the beginnings. “He used to come to our house, and he used to visit Tamás Konok and István Nádler. Everywhere he heard ‘We are elderly and have no children. What’ll happen to the works, the collection, the documents? After all, museums are already so full of bequests that they no longer need later items.” The idea of setting up a group was raised and later it was decided to establish a society. Membership of the OSAS is varied. The society’s objectives are wide-ranging: to maintain the continuity of the geometric-concrete school, to encourage young artists who work in this style, to present new works in an appropriate context and to maintain existing international relations. In future members of the society would like to keep in contact and make their chief works, documents and collections available for research purposes. Co-operation has been realised with the help of the Museum of Fine Arts and the OSAS also applies for support from the National Cultural Fund and banks more or less successfully. “Exhibitions are organised with the old fashioned voluntary work of friends, and despite that if it turns out than an exhibition costs more than what we managed to gather we make up the difference from our own pockets. An artist has to be concerned with her curiosity about the world which she experiences and can mediate.