2000
installation, 600 × 700 cm

The installation titled Marble Street by the artists’ collective Kis Varsó (Bálint Havas, András Gálik) is a silicon copy of the façade of a tenement house built in the 1920s as an officer’s residence in Buda. The door façade, crowned with a naked soldier in a helmet, is a replica of a rubber moulding of full size scale, with a shroud falling down where the door would be.

Twentieth-century façades, or building sculptures and decorative sculpture products are rarely shown in museums, especially in contemporary galleries. The work exhibited here simultaneously alters place, context and function: they put a dominant image of a façade, but one that is not necessarily prominent in its surroundings, into an exhibition setting, which, with its grandiosity and contextual alteration, magnifies its view and monumental nature. The ornate pediment was made visible through the repositioning done by the pair of artists, where the large shroud becomes sculptural and the heroic figure of the soldier stands out with its easily readable iconological statements: the nakedness of the muscular, resting heroic figure emphasises vulnerability and humanity, while his helmet emphasises military preparedness and the ability to defend. The gesture of the creators emphasises the monumental nature of the work, despite the fact that the use of materials has undergone a significant qualitative change during the transposition: the plaster solidity of the original façade has been transformed into a giant, drapery-like rubber relief, from a rigid, static form into an ephemeral, transitory one. The context-altering installation allows us to associate urban space with collective memory and addresses the relationship between personal experience and the public sphere.