2022, living flower, artificial flower, Plexiglass, vase, 50 x 50 cm.
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A group exhibition titled “2057 – Personal Utopias” opened on April 27, 2022, at the MANK Gallery in Szentendre, following a competitive call for entries, where I participated with an installation. I wrote the following text for the exhibited work:
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In the animation titled “Wanderer” (Bolyongó), we see a naked figure walking in circles day and night with Sisyphus-like persistence. The act of walking in circles evokes the ritualistic nature of a round dance, as well as the concept of the Danse Macabre (Dance of Death). We often engage in aimless pacing during difficult, contemplative situations, hoping that the continuity of movement will provide the answer to our questions.
The second version, “Wanderer II,” does not differ much from the first, yet it contains a crucial shift: the figure, a naked woman, now treads her endless laps around a pink plastic basin. The basin may refer to feminine principles or, in itself, to that specific problem which the figure refuses to “step into”—one that she continually circles but never confronts.
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In the painting titled “Minotaur,” we see a male figure wearing a goat mask in a half-length portrait composition. According to Greek mythology, the Minotaur is a half-human, half-bull creature to whom virgins were sacrificed. The goat mask is deceptive and absurd; the title catches the viewer off guard, as the name and the visual image are only loosely connected through allusion.
Regarding an earlier painting of mine, “Biting Dog,” I wrote that the dog is, in a sense, a manifestation of a narcissistic being, as its gaze is human. We are faced with something similar in the case of the “Minotaur”: he is a “negative hero” (anti-hero) who evokes concepts such as domination, the monster, evil, or the scapegoat (…).
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Fertility – action, installation, PET bottle, straw, paper, ink, water, plastic tray, 2021.
In the action-installation titled “Fertility”, my original intent was to articulate the meaning of the word creativity through the medium of installation. Creativity is the driving force behind creation and production; the act of making something is closely intertwined with the concepts of childbirth and birth. Fertility is the prerequisite for succession and procreation; when this process is obstructed, we speak of infertility.
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In my work, I process the visual environment that surrounds me. At times, my focus is on clearly articulable narratives; at others, I engage with impressions, sensations, or associations, always prioritizing a psychological approach. I often leave room for visual or interpretive paradoxes, using them to point toward a deeper underlying content.
In my Hospital series (2020–2021), I created compositions by extracting elements from a clinical environment, focusing on specific objects as if they were portraits. Without the titles, one might not even recognize them as “medical case records.” These paintings were based on photographs of artificial flowers, wall hangings, and printed reproductions of famous paintings found on hospital walls. In these reproductions, their age is evident—they are faded copies. On the hospital walls, a sharp, horizontal dark line separates the emulsion paint from the industrial oil-based paint, evoking the atmosphere of the 1980s and 90s for many of us. Although I have recently had to spend more time in hospitals than expected, these images do not directly recount my personal medical history. Rather, I aimed to evoke the “hospital atmosphere” and, with it, concepts such as illness, trouble, and the sense that “something is not right.”
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Between 2014–2019, my paintings’ main character was a nude female figure wearing a helmet, which I expressed repeatedly, embedded in different contexts.
The helmet is a personal object and closure. It is mask-like skull-shaped, which includes many possibilities of association. Paired with the naked figure, we see a paradoxical result. Concepts such as portrait – non-portrait, adult – child, freedom – confinement, mechanical – human, alienation, vulnerability, female identity, vanitas, living or dead can surface, enhanced by displaying different personal spaces.
I was influenced by, among others, Alex Katz, Michaël Borremans, Peter Greenaway, Caspar David Friedrich, Jacques-Louis David, Édouard Manet, Giorgio de Chirico, Mark Rothko, London School, Cluj School, etc.
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Behind the quote of Gabriel García Márquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude “[…]sees nobody there[…]” Adrienn Erdei belongs to a generation of artists who emerged in the 2010s exposed to the contemporary art trend as well as to the Minimalism and Pop art and to the earlier models such as Surrealism and Expressionism were—and who experimented with tremendous new modes of the pictorial execution. In her inventive artistic environment, Erdei gained distinction by using boldly inventive forms and vivid objects and occurrences from everyday life.
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