Endre Tot | Demo

About

« We must break away from a certain idea of freedom, an absurd idea which, by identifying freedom with deliverance and the power that conditions it, tolls the death knell not only of freedom but also of the inhabitability of our planet » Aurélien Berlan – Terre et liberté, 2021.

This autumn, Salle Principale will be eight years old: the gallery was inaugurated in September 2014 with an exhibition of Patrick Bouchain’s work titled Tambour battant [Beating Drum]. This title set the tone for the gallery’s approach over the following years and reflected its eagerness to share with artists a broad and open attitude to the world and our future. It is in the same spirit that we begin a new year, which could hardly go by without taking into account the recent events that have so profoundly affected our lives since January 2020. We knew for certain that a new era was inevitably in the offing, but we did not know when it would happen. Now that we are no longer in any doubt as to the seriousness of the emergency, the need to adapt forces us more than ever before to adopt a critical stance so that we don’t constantly reproduce errors that our comfortable industrial society has elevated to the level of unsurpassable precepts.

Adapting to the constraints imposed by a political regime has been the rule for artist Endre Tót who, in his way, demonstrates that restriction can also be a source of creative force—something that is sorely lacking in a society devoid of imagination and vision. Endre Tót pokes fun at society, using simple gestures to express his determination to avoid being taken in. The impoverished artist with no means of support succeeds in finding his independence by cultivating a form of optimism, often just a façade, that helps him cope with extremely oppressive situations such as the Hungarian regime in the 1970s. The negation of the individual by a dictatorship led him to use the figure zero as a symbol of “people who are nothing”, denouncing the evil system that restrained him but which ultimately inspired his most relevant work.

The mischievous and provocative game Tót plays manages to flout the rules, for example those against expressing opinions, with a valueless symbol that seems to say nothing. The same dark poetic irony runs through his Nowhere series, emphasising the emptiness of a society that makes individuals into mere pawns serving its totalitarian ideology.

Let’s hope that Tót’s work this September, a month known for its traditionally tense back- to-work atmosphere, can inspire an unexpected attitude that is able to surprise us and make changes happen. This is doubtless one of the reasons why Salle Principale has decided to present Endre Tót’s work at its booth at the forthcoming Paris + par Art Basel art fair...

Dominique Mathieu – august 2022

Translation – Martyn Back

_

Thanks to the Museum of Fine Arts – Artpool Art Research Center for the authorization to diffuse the video Endre Tót : Zero Demonstration Oxford street action, 2 June 1990