Jubilee “Texhibition” Showcases Gems of Textile Designs in Budapest

With works by Polish textile artists, a textile series inspired by contemporary music and a retrospective selection of works from the past ten years, the organizers are welcoming visitors to the jubilee Texhibition from this Thursday until January 19 at art center FUGA in Budapest.

Texhibition, launched a decade ago by Szilvia Szigeti, Noémi Ferenczy Award-winning textile artist, organized in collaboration with interior designer Tamás Radnóti, was created in conjunction with the international exhibition Design without Borders. Its main aim is to raise awareness of textile designers and the creative and production potential of the genre, the organizers said in a press release.

The jubilee exhibition will consist of three units.

The first will foreshadow one of the central themes of the 21st Design without Borders in autumn, a showcase of Polish designers, giving a taste of the country’s textile designers.

This selection will feature the unique woven works of Aleksandra Gaca, Piotr Skowron’s prints of geometric abstractions based on lines, Zuzanna Wójcik’s jacquard fabrics and Paulina Soltyszewska’s hand-printed textiles, screen-printed works by Falbanka Studio, and unique printed textiles by students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź (ASP Łódź).

The second part is a thematic series based on musical inspirations, a continuation of the project organized in the framework of Texhibition 2023, the 100th anniversary of the birth of György Ligeti. In it, 11 textile artists designed digitally printed works for the composer’s 11-movement piano cycle Musica ricercata. This year, twenty textile artists also created textiles using digital printing, inspired by the CentriFUGA production of the Transparent Sound New Music Festival.

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Eight composers participated in the project, creating different music flows that were visually mapped by the textile artists. Although the series is made up of individual units, the juxtaposition of black dots, reminiscent of sheet music, creates a “visual melody sequence.” The inspired works will be presented to the public at the finale of the exhibition.

In the third block of the exhibition, visitors will be able to see a representative selection of textiles produced over the last ten years at Texhibition, including unique pieces as well as materials made using various industrial techniques.

Over the past decade, the Texhibition project has included 400 pieces by around 100 artists, created as a kind of prototype collection in close collaboration between artists and manufacturers.

The participating designers were free to use or reuse the textiles, or together with the manufacturers, they sought and are seeking further sales and development opportunities, as well as the international contacts that would facilitate this. The number of designers has fallen dramatically in recent years, hence the exhibitions also feature unique textiles.

Texhibition also seeks to promote dialogue between the generations, therefore every year, in addition to the designers who have already established themselves in the industry, four to five young textile artists are given the opportunity to present their work, and the organizers encourage international contacts by inviting foreign artists.

To increase visibility and highlight the importance of patronage, since 2018, the Design without Borders Award has been awarded to a textile designer every year.

The first Texhibition took place in 2014, as part of the Borderless Design Exhibition, hosted for the first two years at the New Budapest Gallery – Bálna and since 2017, at the FUGA Budapest Architecture Center. This year, the exhibition is accompanied by several accompanying programs. There will be curatorial guided tours on January 15, 17, and 19, and contemporary music concerts on the evenings of January 17 and 19.

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