Video work, based on Hungarian short story, will be exhibited in Switzerland

Péter Forgács‘s video work Venom will be exhibited at the artgenève international art fair in Switzerland by the Ani Molnár Gallery.

Forgács’s video, Venom – A Diva in Exile (2018) is based on Hungarian author Zsófia Bán’s eponymous short story that addresses the relation between the past, love, losses, and snakes. In her short story she writes about a little-known episode of Hungary’s tangled and traumatic pre–and post–World War II history, centered around the film star and singer Katalin Karády. The parallel worlds of the text, the music of János Másik, and the moving images enrich each other producing a sensual composition, which addresses issues related to space, time, as well as private and collective history.

Péter Forgács is a well-established Hungarian media artist and internationally known film-maker. His works can be found in the collections of the MoMA (New York), the Centre Pompidou (Paris) or The Getty Museum in Los Angeles, among others. Since 1978, he has been creating films and media installations. His video installations have been exhibited in MCNY (NY), The Getty (LA), The EYE (Amsterdam), Bozar (Brussels) and in The Louvre (Paris) among others. In 2009 he represented Hungary (Col Tempo) at the Venice Biennale, and his works ‘The Maelstrom’ and ‘Hunky Blues’ were on view in The Louvre.

Zsófia Bán was born in Rio de Janeiro and grew up in Brazil and Hungary. She is a writer, critic and scholar. Besides short stories, she has been a prolific writer of essays and reviews on literature, art, and visual culture. She is the recipient of a number of prizes for fiction and essay writing, and her work has been translated to many languages. Her story ‘Venom’ was published in her book ‘When There Were Only Animals’ (2012) which was a finalist at the International Literature Prize in Berlin in 2014.

artgenève: Palexpo SA, Route François-Peyrot 30, 1218 le Grand-Saconnex, Switzerland

Opening hours:
Thursday, 2020.01.30. 12 p.m. – 7 p.m.
Friday, 2020.01.31. 12 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Saturday, 2020.02.01. 12 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Sunday, 2020.02.02. 12 p.m. – 7 p.m.