At a bustling intersection of downtown Pest, Andrássy Avenue 33 is seemingly just the same as most other buildings on this grand boulevard. Stepping through the doorway, we encounter intriguing interior decorations, and then we make our way towards the stairs to the second floor, which can also be reached using the super-modern glass-doored lift.
The apartment at the end of the corridor holds a special sight: instead of the typical traditional ambience of old-fashioned Pest apartments, here we see an entirely refurbished residence, with three spacious bare rooms decorated solely with paintings hanging on the walls, alongside a few armchairs, a coffee machine, and a couple of wine magazines.
The visionary behind this place is János Schneller, a young art historian who has spent many years in the world of contemporary galleries, antique shops, and auction houses, before coming up with the idea of an apartment art gallery. He noted that Falk Miksa Street, where antique shops and galleries are crammed along the entire lane, functions fine as a thematic region, but still remains a bit inaccessible because it is almost always the same people who attend the events and exhibitions organized there.
Hungary’s music and theater culture is thriving, proven by the frequently packed performances at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music and the Budapest Music Center, not to mention big festivals and crammed theater shows. However, besides one or two large-scale museum exhibitions held every year, the same enthusiasm cannot be found in the fine arts and contemporary visual-art culture.
The various walking tours organized by the Resident Art group take art enthusiasts to an assortment of the city’s galleries and antique shops, along with the studios of young artists, and to the ateliers of Bartók Béla Road, which is an ideal spot for chatting with Budapest-based artists. The tours terminate at the Andrássy showroom, where guests can view the works with a detailed guided tour, and taste regional wines at the same time.
János is the tour guide, and his insight is invaluable, because some of the exhibits are abstract or conceptual, so the insider insight offers a lot of context to the creation of each piece on display.
Without any background knowledge, the well-thought-out, transcendental works of Attila Kondor would seem like more conventional paintings than they are. In the pieces of Csilla Bondor, wood planks, reality, and art intermingle, as our eyes create the picture of a lake to surround the actual 3D imagery of rowboats on the water. Nearby, Zsolt Varga’s layer-structured paintings are interpreted as fairy landscapes, but upon closer examination they turn out to be something else.
The prices of the paintings fall into the middle-to-upper-middle range, but they are highly interesting decorations for the walls.
You can visit the gallery for free, without an appointment; currently they are open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays between 1pm and 6pm, but if you wish to visit another time, feel free to contact the gallery.
Resident Art Showroom
Budapest 1061, Andrássy Avenue 33
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