Gustáv Hegedüš – In the Forest /SK/
5.3. – 31.5.2020
Gustáv Hegedüš (1941) lives and worksTurčianskych Tepliciach.
He returned to his native Turec after decades being in engineering industry (engineering professions in Svit, Snina, Martin and Zvolen). After, it was work in the press media that allowed him to get to know different parts and regions of Slovakia. His long-term cherished relationship to nature, tourism, skiing, along with the growth of his own photographic vision, naturally brought him prepared for the art photography scene, with themes closely bounded up to people and natural elements. Recently, the photographer has been active in the Karol Plicka Photo Club in Martin and in the regional competitions of AMFO.
Gustav Hegedüš’s photographic work in the 1960s and 1990s was focused on landscape themes and stylized and reportage portraits from the student and later working environment, which were formed by the photographic wave of the Bratislava phototribunes in Suchý myto. He was involved in creative life „with photography“, which took place in industrial, more precisely urban cultural clubs based in locations of his activity in relation to AMFO competitions and events. He welcomed social changes with the birth of the new century, with themes in separate exhibition projects. The first of them was My Journey, a retrospective of creation with a return to birth place, a circle of family and friends with pictures of character portraits in formal and informal poise. The author’s strong bond to nature and the environment was reflected in the photocycles Water as a Picture, My Elements and the Earth. Distinctive themes were portraits of creative artists Sympoart and artists of various genres Art-isti. He presented these cycles at twenty solo exhibitions in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Gustáv Hegedüš found deepening of his relationship with nature and a great impetus and inspiration for further work in the book written by the German forester Petr Wohlleben The Secret Life of Trees and in the poetic work of the friend Ondrej Nagaj. He elevated the connection of word and image into the exhibition project In the Woods. The poet Ondrej Nagaj is one of the most prominent representatives of Slovak poetry outside the capital, who has published more than forty collections for adults and verses books for children.
Photographer Gustáv Hegedüš, walking on mountains, valleys, perceives the land with all his senses, except beauty he sees the insensitive local and global human intervention in it. He wants the project In the Forest to be also the result of his active attitude to the threat of climate change. But above all, it is an artistic contribution of a photographer who communicates with friends, word artists, forest connoisseurs and woodworkers to deliver the message to people to love and protect the Earth and the Forest.
Mgr. Janka Kolláriková