Drawn-Up Books III.: Tamás Füredi: Pentala

Drawn-Up Books III.: Tamás Füredi: Pentala

What catches the artist's eye? And how can a personal memory become a communal experience? Tamás Füredi's work Pentala was inspired by a photograph in the book How We See the Finns? Finland: A Hungarian Perspective.

We can only see a small piece of the landscape. The photo shows a chimney cabin on the edge of a forest, with the horizon of a lake in the background. At the end of the road leading to the house, in the front garden, you can see a vat. Wondering what could be the purpose of the barrel made of bent elements is? If we search for information about the picture reveals that it was taken in 1899, it is from the collection of the National Museum of Finland and shows the sauna of the Pitkänen family. This gives us an idea of the function of the vat: the photo probably shows a sauna bucket. “The Finnish national symbol, the most important tool of Finnish hospitality is the sauna, and the ‘Finnish sauna’ is a notion in Hungary as well”, can be read in the chapter entitled "From tradition to wellness culture: The Finnish Sauna". The study describes in detail this specific, ancient tradition of bathing culture, the beliefs, customs, and ethnographic aspects of sauna culture.

In each case, a photograph is a detail grabbed from the continuum of reality, an action taken from a series of events, an element of the landscape, an object captured from a single angle. And it is precisely this framed piece of reality that can trigger the vision to imagine events outside the frame. The photograph of the Pitkänen family sauna evoked the memory of an earlier trip to Finland by Tamás Füredi and his sauna experience there. The chalk landscape, applied to the wall with movements by routine, is a combination of reality, recall, and imagination. Seeing the drawing, we can recall another memory of our own and trigger a series of associations, whether they be linked to the landscape, sauna bathing, tranquillity, purification, or harmony.

And why is the title of the drawing Pentala? The artist's answer is clear: "I would give it a good-sounding name of a Finnish place”.

Judit Gellér

The Drawn-Up Books is the latest experimental space of the MaDok-programme inviting contemporary artists to draw on a black painted surface, inspired by the publications of the Museum of Ethnography. Concept and project management: Judit Gellér

MaDok is the museum programme of contemporary research, organised and coordinated by the Museum of Ethnography since 2003. The MaDok-programme focuses on the preservation of contemporary artefacts and the documentation and presentation of the present in museums. The programme is an attempt to give visibility to empirical research on the concept of the present, including the collections aspect, and to create an academic forum.

Tamás Füredi is a graphic designer who studied at the Secondary School of Arts in Pécs and then at the Hungarian University of Arts and Design. Since 1996, he has regularly exhibited his work at solo and group exhibitions and festivals throughout Europe. By his own admission, he works "as an applied decorative painter, advertising graphic designer aka photoshop lasso tool, clean room painter, ex-team member of the 1000% street art group, ex-painter of Neopaint, firewall painter, as well as tourist sign painter and freehand typographer".