Opening: 9. 11. 2023
Exhibition: 10.11. – 9.12.2023
Imagine a neo-gothic skyscraper, right out of a DC Comics – the Cathedral of Learning – an existing construction, that is the centerpiece at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, United States. Inside the building, there are more than thirty ‘nationality rooms’ commemorating the cultural heritage of the communities that supported and planned the city’s construction. Amongst them one can find the Yugoslav Room, English Room, Irish, Scottish, German, Hungarian, and many more. Yet there is no room for the ‘Internationalists’, which is all the more disconcerting given the role Pittsburgh played in the history of the US workers’ movement.
International Room is a solo exhibition by the Hungarian artist Ferenc Gróf. The installation at the MoTA LAB space acts as a proposal for the ‘International room’ that would commemorate the ghosts of the internationalists, alongside their ethnic counterparts, in the Cathedral of Learning.
Ferenc Gróf (1972, Pécs, HU) is a graduate of the Hungarian University of the Arts, Budapest, and since 2012 he has taught at the École Nationale Supérieur d’Art (ENSA) in Bourges (FR). His work considers ideological footprints, at the intersection of graphic design and spatial experiences. He is a founding member of the Parisian co-operative Société Réaliste (2004–2015), whose work considers questions of contemporary political representations and text-based interventions. Société Réaliste’s work has also been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions and biennials such as Shanghai, 2012; Lyon, 2009; and Istanbul, 2009. Since 2015 Société Réaliste is on hiatus, Ferenc Gróf continues his work as an individual artist. His most recent solo exhibitions were Without index (Kiscelli Museum,Budapest, 2016), X with a dot below (OFF Biennale, Budapest, 2017), Or firing of a red star alert (acb Gallery, Budapest, 2018), Anxiocene (Moulins de Paillard, FR, 2019) or Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies Venue (Institute of Contemporary Art, Dunaújváros, HU, 2022). Gróf lives and works in Paris.
The exhibition is supported by the Liszt Institute Ljubljana and Municipality of Ljubljana.
