3rd National Salon of Fine Arts 2025 at Műcsarnok
The exhibition, which can be seen between 23 May and 28 September, the third time in the series of Műcsarnok's annual National Salons, is presenting the most important efforts and works of Hungarian fine art from home and abroad over the past five years. The works of the artists invited by the curators – painter József Baksai, a regular member of HAA, and painter György Verebes, a regular member of HAA – are presented according to themes organized along keywords, which serve as a guiding thread to help interpret the exhibition and to systematically see the works of outstanding figures of Hungarian fine art that belong to the responsible emotional/thoughtful range.
The title of the exhibition, Non-Fungible Tokens is a term borrowed from the crypto world, meaning a virtual object that is provided with a unique digital identifier, but the term captures something of the essence of fine art in its modern and inventive way. The concept of the exhibition focuses on one word: the OBJECT as the objectified result of the personal creative process. Its presence is like that of a loyal friend: irreplaceable.
Our virtual reality, which invaded our existing spaces with overwhelming intensity at the turn of the 21st century, now seeks to permeate our lives more carefully, with the utmost circumspection. Step by step. As the escalating digital revolution bombarded our daily lives with an increasingly unmanageable torrent of information, introducing newer and newer functions, it has, by now, rendered itself ultimately indispensable. It has created a digital culture that generates its own values, previously unknown, through infinite and irreconcilable contradictions.
So much so that human culture has awakened in a universe never seen before.
Is it an exaggeration to claim that this material world thrust into virtuality – with the ingenuity of the human mind in the background, of course – functions as living matter in its own intangible totality? A glowing, sizzling, undulating consciousness that, in its own defence, responds to the tradition-based questions posed by human culture with elemental force. Matter? A reality beyond matter? Tradition? The medieval theologian Duns Scotus' concept applied to virtuality? The traditional forms of art? Artistic freedom created through digital means? Self-identity? Virtual identity? And once we got this far: the unrestricted replicability of digital artworks versus the uniqueness of tangible artistic objects?
Non-fungible token. An irreplaceable object.
The ‘digitalised' meaning of the term, which has become widespread over the past five years, is an invention of the new millennium. It was created by the cryptoworld, founded by Satoshi Nakamoto, who remains completely unknown, and what it denotes is essentially a form of virtual content, assigned a digital identifier, and as such, unique and unrepeatable.
Yet, if we look back at the term ‘non-fungible object' from the digital present, not just in its current context but in its traditional sense, it becomes bizarrely relevant to the entire realm of visual art. The contemporary ingenuity of its virtual metamorphosis captures something of the essence of art both before and after digitisation.
A striking change in contemporary art over the past five years is that even works created using traditional methods can no longer remain unaffected by the digital cosmos, which is racing at wind speed.
This year's National Salon of Fine Arts seeks to reflect the richness of personal responses to society's shifts and, in doing so, to illustrate the infiltration of the emerging virtual world into traditional artistic thinking. Whether this manifests in form and/or content remains the artist's individual decision. The exhibition seeks to reveal a worldview reflecting upon our times, where the desire to rethink tradition coexists with the so-called digital mindset underpinning the tangible creations of the material world.
Our virtual reality, which invaded our existing spaces with overwhelming intensity at the turn of the 21st century, now seeks to permeate our lives more carefully, with the utmost circumspection. Step by step. As the escalating digital revolution bombarded our daily lives with an increasingly unmanageable torrent of information, introducing newer and newer functions, it has, by now, rendered itself ultimately indispensable. It has created a digital culture that generates its own values, previously unknown, through infinite and irreconcilable contradictions.
So much so that human culture has awakened in a universe never seen before.
Is it an exaggeration to claim that this material world thrust into virtuality – with the ingenuity of the human mind in the background, of course – functions as living matter in its own intangible totality? A glowing, sizzling, undulating consciousness that, in its own defence, responds to the tradition-based questions posed by human culture with elemental force. Matter? A reality beyond matter? Tradition? The medieval theologian Duns Scotus' concept applied to virtuality? The traditional forms of art? Artistic freedom created through digital means? Self-identity? Virtual identity? And once we got this far: the unrestricted replicability of digital artworks versus the uniqueness of tangible artistic objects?
Non-fungible token. An irreplaceable object.
The ‘digitalised' meaning of the term, which has become widespread over the past five years, is an invention of the new millennium. It was created by the cryptoworld, founded by Satoshi Nakamoto, who remains completely unknown, and what it denotes is essentially a form of virtual content, assigned a digital identifier, and as such, unique and unrepeatable.
Yet, if we look back at the term ‘non-fungible object' from the digital present, not just in its current context but in its traditional sense, it becomes bizarrely relevant to the entire realm of visual art. The contemporary ingenuity of its virtual metamorphosis captures something of the essence of art both before and after digitisation.
A striking change in contemporary art over the past five years is that even works created using traditional methods can no longer remain unaffected by the digital cosmos, which is racing at wind speed.
This year's National Salon of Fine Arts seeks to reflect the richness of personal responses to society's shifts and, in doing so, to illustrate the infiltration of the emerging virtual world into traditional artistic thinking. Whether this manifests in form and/or content remains the artist's individual decision. The exhibition seeks to reveal a worldview reflecting upon our times, where the desire to rethink tradition coexists with the so-called digital mindset underpinning the tangible creations of the material world.
2025. május 21.
