TAMÁS FÉNER: ATTRIBUTED PORTRAITS
2B Gallery
1092 Budapest, Ráday utca 47.
2b-org.hu
13 October – 12 November 2021

Opening:
13 October 2021, 6 PM
Opening speech by:
Lajos Parti Nagy
©
Tamás Féner: József Schwitzer, 2020

A portrait can be attributed or unattributed. In the latter case, the creator hopes the model is well-known enough to be recognized. If the model is a less-known person, or the intention is to change or supplement the image of a well-known person, an attribute is used: St Peter flourishing keys, St Sebastian with arrows in his body, St Florian with the leather bucket are cases in point. Throughout his long career, Tamás Féner has made photographic portraits with various approaches. In his latest series, which he considers an experiment, he joins the portraits of persons he loves and respects to objects. He sometimes goes so far with the experiment as to present only the attribute and the thing that is meant to refer to the model. The objects Féner uses—or as he prefers to call them, the signs—had and have easy-to-decode meanings in the given cultural sphere. A sign is a piece of reality that can be perceived with the senses and which for the mind refers to another piece of reality, another phenomenon. It is into this field of associations the Féner introduces a printer’s case, the Vizsoly Bible, text from a Torah scroll, a fishbowl filled with water, a steel spiral, or a car suspension spring.