The exhibition presents a selection of works from Anna Eszter Tóth's Darker Dreams series, first shown in 2024, placing them in a new context. It is not a nostalgic回顾 but a conscious re-thinking: the artist transplants her own set of motifs onto new carriers, creating a dialogue between the mediums of painting, ceramics, and serigraphy. Opening speech by aesthetician Tiffany Farkas.
"Every cloud has a silver lining" is a 17th-century English saying, an idiom used to describe difficult, negative life situations in which some positive possibility or outcome still appears. The phrase refers to a visually strong phenomenon: when the sun's rays break through dark clouds in a dramatic, graphic way. In contrast, the Hungarian equivalent – "minden rosszban van valami jó" (there is something good in every bad thing) – is surprisingly terse. It seems to lose the imagery and symbolic depth inherent in the sun emerging from behind the cloud: the transition, hope, and forward-looking perspective. The title is therefore particularly telling in this exhibition context.
Anna exhibits works that were created during a darker, more difficult period a few years ago. However, the exhibition does not speak from that time – but looks back at them from a later position. From a perspective that has already moved beyond the questions of that time, beyond a visual language and an era, and in which experiences, lessons, and influences have already become visible.
Anna's work is still primarily interpreted and identified through her Laundries series, known for her pseudo ready-made piles of clothes and her colorful, dynamic, large-patterned canvases. However, I got to know Anna – and, in parentheses, so many other artists in the past few years – during her dark period, through the Dark Laundry, Darker Dreams, and Nyomhagyás exhibitions. It is interesting to speak and interpret from a position where darkness has become an ontological basis. All this seems natural growing up in a discourse where crisis, uncertainty, and external/internal tension are part of life – negative emotions, anxiety, and depression are not exceptions but fundamental experiences and almost natural reactions to the changes in our world.
During our conversation with Anna, one thought particularly stuck with me: "The dark is always mystical." For me, this statement expresses both the artist's weariness with her previous, colorful series and her desire to experiment in the opposite direction. There is something austere, disciplined, and measured in the almost monochrome images, even in the use of few colors itself. The color palette is very 21st-century: whites, grays, blacks - I can't quite decide if they are cold or warm, but I don't find them unfriendly. I look around the world, and our cars, tech devices, and wardrobes have become like this in the last two decades, so this world feels quite familiar. From the previously piled and grouped forms, protagonists emerged here, duos and trios of shapes came into focus. There is a strong duality in the pictures: symbol pairs of up and down, light and dark, inverses, confrontations, tensions, and dialogues are present in the images.
Simon Hantai's Meun series, its playfulness and reinterpretation, played a decisive role in the creation of these works. The deconstruction, cutting, tearing apart, and collage of forms from works created in the sixties led to the emergence of cloud motifs and new forms. Given that our brains have been irresistibly and irrevocably programmed for the need for rapidly changing, rapidly created, and rapidly consumable things, I particularly like the endeavor for recycling and reuse in art as well. Anna's practice is also built on this approach: she creates new and new works by constantly drawing on the visual toolkit of her previous series and her predecessors. Collage is also dominant here in digital form: the prints were created specifically for the exhibition, following this way of thinking.
Finally, I would like to say a few words about the Printa edition kimono created for the exhibition and the cloud motif. The kimono essentially closes the cycle that began with the Laundries series like a snake biting its own tail – the symbol of the ouroboros here simultaneously carries cyclicity, self-renewal, and closure. Even then, or perhaps precisely because this garment is the opposite of everything that previously appeared in Anna's work: the meticulously crafted, signature-like pattern, and among other things, its wearability, elevate it to a completely different dimension. The cloud motif appears in many cultures; of course, I started my thoughts from the furthest point, and naturally, traditional Chinese cloud patterns, i.e., yunwen, came to mind. Yet, I don't have to look that far, neither in time nor geographically. We also have a "cloud artist" in our small Hungarian art history, none other than the recently deceased András Lengyel, whom I definitely wanted to briefly remember today, and mention his Cloud Museum founded in the 80s and essentially his entire artistic practice, which was focused on the cloud motif. His impact on Hungarian art primarily lies in initiating a discourse and sensitizing us to transient, unstable, and hard-to-describe phenomena, forms, and motifs. His writings contributed to the fact that Hungarian art can be read not exclusively as a history of styles or mediums, but also as a history of forms of thought and visual metaphors.
Our Silver Lining exhibition is open until February 26, 2026. The kimono and screen prints created as part of the collaboration are available here.
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Anna Eszter Tóth, visual artist
Graduated as a painter in 2014, awarded the Barcsay Prize in 2015. Since 2021, she has been a doctoral student at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. Her works were acquired by the MNB Collection in 2024, and from 2025, they will enrich the collections of the Ludwig Museum and MODEM.