The Hungarian Pavilion in the Giardini presents the work “Col Tempo – The W. Project” by Péter Forgács. The Hungarian media artist and recipient of the 2007 Erasmus Prize conceived a work that revolves around one single motif: the human face.

Péter Forgács is working with archival footage from the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria (video editor: Péter Sass). But Col Tempo is no history show: it is less about faces on old pictures than “about various contexts of our contemporary look projected onto the Other.” (excerpt from the press release).

Péter Forgács (born 1950) has made more than thirty films, several of which won awards at international film festivals. Forgács first gained international recognition with The Bartos Family film in 1988 at the World Wide Video Festival -The Hague. He is best known for his “Private Hungary” series of award winning films based on home movies from the 1920s and 1980s, which document ordinary lives that were soon to be ruptured by an extraordinary historical trauma that occurs off screen. His last film “Hunky Blues – the American Dream” has been premiered in May 2009 at the MoMA, New York and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Péter Forgács: Col Tempo, Hungarian Pavilion, 53rd International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia. June 4, 2009.

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