HAP Gallery, 2003-2014

Text: András Ferkai
Photo: Tamás Bujnovszky

Closed right now, HAP Gallery in Budapest as well as other venues have hosted a total of 110 temporary, permanent or travelling exhibitions in the past 11 years. Besides the presentations and introductions of some artists, painters, graphic artists, sculptors, photographers and certain topics (such as the display of the pink Zsolnay collection of the owner), the overwhelming majority of the exhibitions here were about architects and phenomena associated with architecture. Some of them dealt with a significant period (such as that of Socialist Realism), others specialized in architectural photography, an already terminated state-run designers office, or an existing department of the technical university. However, the gallery preserved its profile of presenting well-known or less famous contemporary figures of architecture as well as those of our recent past. Barnabás Winkler, the founder of the gallery who is also the maker of the exhibitions is the son of a well-known architect active in Sopron, and thus was a personal acquaintance of the generation of architects in the interwar era, who later on kept in touch with almost every significant architect active in public national planning. After the disintegration of the extensive architects’ offices a new period of an atomized world with chaotic values started in which he understandably felt compelled to present the oeuvres that represented unquestionable values but had been unknown and unnoticed even by most of the professionals, not to speak of the wider audience.