TechnoCool - The birth of the techno era in Hungarian art (1989-2001)

The Hungarian National Gallery’s exhibition TechnoCool: New Trends in Hungarian Art in the Nineties (1989–2001) presents the art of the period at several levels. The works featured in the exhibition emphasise the inspirational influence of the media and IT as well as visual, pop and DJ culture, while also touching upon the issues arising in the public discourse on art. The aim is to draw the public’s attention to the analogies in the cultural phenomena of the era. Pop culture’s optimistic sense of life and the euphoria of the aftermath of the political changes in Central and Eastern Europe endowed society in both Eastern and Western Europe with a positive vision of the future. Today’s view of history sees the end of this period in the September 11 attacks by al-Qaeda on the Twin Towers in New York City. Thus, the time frame of the exhibition extends from 1989 to 2001, with the 1990s being remembered as the last optimistic decade of history. Noteworthily, although there was already an awareness of global warming and social polarisation, they were still regarded as solvable problems during these years.

The various parts of the exhibition – presented in this catalogue too – weave a thematic arc of the art of the 1990s in which the artistic practices of the period can be interpreted in relation to each other. The identified themes are not exclusive categories of the artists’ works, for they also show examples of transitions within individual artistic careers.
Throughout the exhibition, emphasis is given to Nicolas Bourriaud’s idea of musical analogy, with parallels being drawn between electronic music and the artworks presented in the sections of the exhibition. The objective is to illuminate the various inspirations by highlighting underground rather than mainstream records. Just like the fine art of the period, the music of the 1990s is ripe for many discoveries. The works featured in the exhibition serve to illustrate the theoretical approaches mentioned in the introduction, offering the possibility for us to reflect on the complexity of neoconceptual trends, the image ontological approach, the effects of consumer visuality, the embeddedness of media art in other genre categories, and technorealism. Making maximum use of the available space, the exhibition presents developments in the various artistic media – painting, object, photography, print, video, and (to a lesser extent) computer-based art – during the 1990s.