Adam Magyar *1972 Debrecen (H). Lives & works in Berlin
available works
Matter: Howrah Bridge, Kolkata 2022, 1/8, 34 x 60cm, framed
Matter: Pashupatinath, Kathmandu 2022, 1/8, 34 x 60cm, framed
Matter: Dashashwamedh Ghat, Varnasi 2022, 1/8, 34 x 60cm, framed
Matter: 42 Street, New York 2022, 1/8, 34 x 60cm, framed
Matter: Flushing Av, New York 2022, 1/8, 34 x 60cm, framed
Squares: Berlin I, 2019, 2/6, 104 x 175cm
Stainless B14536 (Paris, 2011), silver gelatin print, 40 x 84cm, 3/3, framed
Stainless 03621 (Tokyo, 2010), archival inkjet print, 40 x 98,5cm, 3/3, framed
Stainless 13316 (Paris, 2011), silver gelatin print, 80 x 164cm, edition of 6
Urban Flow 247, Hong Kong, 2007, archival inkjet print, 26 × 240cm, 8/8
Urban Flow 211, Rome, 2007, 26 x 240cm, archival inkjet print, 4/8
Stainless, Shinjuku (Tokyo), 2013, video, edition of 3
Stainless, Alexanderplatz at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2017
Permanent exhibition. Photo by Pablo Gimenez Zapiola
Urban Flow 424, Hong Kong, 2007, 26x240cm, archival inkjet print, edition of 8
Urban Flow 1837, New York, 2015, 60x170cm, archival inkjet print, edition of 8
works in puplic collections
HOW SOON IS NOW
"Still, picturing the planet earth, for convenience sake,
as a gigantic coffee table does in fact help clear away the clutter - those practically pointless contingencies
such as gravity and the international dateline and the equator,
those nagging details that arise from the spherical view."
Haruki Murakami, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
The work of Adam Magyar is a tribute to the city and citizens.
In his whole work he developes a unique technique that reveals new dimensions in photography.
In its dynamics, Magyar's ultimately utopistic perspective discloses ever-present but never-seen layers of the city
and depicts citizens as elementary particles acting in the greater whole,
embedded in their functional progress. Magyar's Stainless series is in the focus of his new activities.
The immaculate subway trains are captured in the process of slowing down: due to Magyar's elaborate and ingenious photographic technique,
the trains pulling into the station seem like still lives coated with deep and soothing black. As classic portraits,
the subway trains seem sublime in their pure functionality and appear to convey a timeless and motionless peace
both to the passengers and the portraits' viewers,
even when all passengers appear to be preparing themselves for their arrival in the train station.
Magyar's series Urban Flow works with a reversed visual logic,
because the process of acceleration is converted here into a process-wise visual standstill.
With this - in fact - impossible space-time constellation, the citizens are the city itself, presented in all its dynamics.
This way, he lends an abstract quality to the urban time-flow, and makes us stop.
Therefore, the photographic moment is not only doubled and sequentially frozen but is brought to life in the standstill.
So, glide over squares to see city vertigoes, stop at a crossing where everyone is rushing by or dive deep into the subway tunnels
and marvel at the tranquility and beauty of life as aesthetized by Adam Magyar.
Uwe Goldenstein
Tokyo I, from series Squares, 121×180cm -->