The Olomouc Museum of Modern Art in the Czech Republic is currently showing an art exhibition focused on the celebrated Hungarian neo-avant-garde artist László Lakner (born 1936), who pursued a diverse practice across painting, sculpture art, visual art and conceptual art, and repeatedly incorporated print-based media within his works. Notably, Lakner’s human protagonists often possess a listless, or in sharp contrast—a manic, charged quality—that many will find quite haunting. The show, titled László Lakner. Infinitum is running from February 29 - May 19, 2024, and brings together several of Lakner’s paintings and conceptual artworks. Infinitum is co-curated by Dávid Fehér, Director, Central European Research Institute for Art History (KEMKI) and Curator of 20th Century and Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, and by Barbora Kundračíková, Head of Museum of Modern Art Department, Olomouc Central European Forum and Curator of Graphics of the 20th Century, Olomouc Museum of Modern Art. Fehér joins STIR in an interview to explore the inimitably haunting power that Lakner’s human protagonists hold, and the manner in which the artist’s media-related inspirations have shifted from print to digital, over the course of his illustrious life.

Discussing Lakner’s protagonists, Fehér points out that many of the artist’s early portrait works are of unnamed figures. He tells STIR, “Lakner presents anonymous revolutionaries before execution, Buddhist priests in a state of self-immolation, but he also presents the anti-heroes of authoritarian regimes, the Kafkaesque figures of bureaucracy with a sarcastic smile, nameless women (seamstresses) listening to the dictator’s speech in silence, protesters, revolutionaries, collaborators and possible perpetrators. He presents modes of survival in dictatorships; the moral dilemmas of obedience and adaptation to societal structures and systems.” Perhaps the key to understanding the listless quality that works such as Seamstresses Listen to Hitler’s Speech (1960) possess lies at the very end of Fehér’s statement, as Lakner himself had to face the horrors of the Second World War at a very young age, as a child living in occupied Hungary. The artist’s works that deal with the human condition within a political state of authoritarianism carry both a palpable dread as well as a banality, which when taken together feel deeply authentic and indicative of his lived experience. Like many other post-war artists, Lakner’s works explore a paranoid society, living in the apprehension of the “other”— an enemy manufactured by the state as a tool of unification and control.

Lakner presents anonymous revolutionaries before execution, Buddhist priests in a state of self-immolation, but he also presents the anti-heroes of authoritarian regimes, the Kafkaesque figures of bureaucracy with a sarcastic smile… – Dávid Fehér

Beyond Lakner’s portraiture, mass media served as an important source of inspiration for the artist, and repeatedly found its way into his work. Fehér tells STIR that this fascination would begin to show up in his practice in the 1960s, a decade after he rose to prominence. He says, “Marshall McLuhan’s theories about the medium as the message were an important reference point for his book-works and paintings that transformed press images into a sensual yet conceptual form of painting.” Fehér is referring to the famed Canadian philosopher here, who pioneered the field of media theory. McLuhan believed that the medium through which we absorb information becomes intertwined with the information itself, and it would seem that Lakner agreed, as the pieces that the artist created through inspiration drawn from books for example, featured the physical artefacts of those books prominently.

Lakner has seen mass media move from print-only to digital-first in his lifetime. This transition played out within his conceptual art practice as well. Fehér tells STIR that in 1989, Lakner digitally deconstructed and rewrote revolutionary Hungarian poet Sándor Petőfi’s famous nationalistic poem Anyám tyúkja (My Mother’s Hen), which was originally composed in 1848. The artist effectively transferred nationalistic sentiment to a digital idiom, appropriate to our day and age, which disquiets now more than ever, in light of the proliferation of digital surveillance and the rampant information warfare campaigns that are unfolding before our very eyes.

Beyond his book art, the rise of digital media also affected Lakner’s understanding of photography. As Fehér explains, he created a series of large-scale photographic works in the ‘80s that address the relationship between original and copy, and question the hitherto accepted veracity of the medium in an age of digital image manipulation. These and many other works by Lakner, across era and genre, are on display at Infinitum and sensitise audiences to the artist’s equally analytical and emotional worldview. From his early portraits exploring human adaptation to authoritarianism to his later conceptual works that responded to the advent of digital media, visitors to The Olomouc Museum of Modern Art will explore firsthand the perspectives of a modern Central European master. The museum considers the ongoing exhibition to be one of its key achievements, bringing Lakner and his peers to the forefront of contemporary art discourse in Europe. Only time will tell if the museum manages to kindle widespread interest in the practices of post-war Central European artists, however László Lakner. Infinitum is undoubtedly a step in the right direction.

‘László Lakner. Infinitum’ is on display at the Olomouc Museum of Modern Art from February 29 - May 19, 2024.