Habitat

The exhibition at the Hungarian National Gallery presents the visions and attitudes towards nature that have appeared in art from the second half of the nineteenth century to the present. The climate crisis, the problem of the exploitation of natural resources and the increasingly threatening ecological catastrophe have become increasingly dominant themes in international and domestic art discourse over the last ten years. The realisation of the ecological crisis and its confrontation with the culture of late capitalism is the subject of numerous artworks, projects and exhibitions. Placing this problem in a broader context, this exhibition seeks to answer the question of how we can redefine boundaries in the Anthropocene in the light of nature and culture, the perception of nature and landscape of previous centuries and the ecological perspective of the present, and the complex relationship between nature and urban culture. The exhibition includes artworks by artists who viewed nature as an independent entity, the relationship between man and nature as a unity, and who may have a proto-ecological approach, such as Mednyánszky or Courbet. These works enter into dialogue with land art, by Alan Sonfist, who was already a pioneer of ecological art in the 1970s, and with contemporary works by the Pécs Workshop. The exhibition includes a selection of Hungarian contemporary artists, who reflect on various posthuman theories, while also raising the issue of the relationship between industrial agriculture and nature or the communication of plants.