Snail Action

1972

Not on view

Perneczky is an artist, critic, and art historian who emigrated from Hungary to Cologne, Germany, in 1970, where he served as an important mediator between the international art scene and the Hungarian neo-avant-garde. Shortly after his arrival in Cologne, he began using the camera to document small table-top installations, developing and printing his photographs at a darkroom in the basement of a local youth club. This before-and-after image of garden snails being activated by a watering hose labeled "art" is characteristic of his conceptual photo-works of this period--wry, poetic, and ingeniously self-referential.

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Title: Snail Action
Artist: Géza Perneczky (Hungarian, born 1936)
Date: 1972
Medium: Gelatin silver prints
Dimensions: Image: 19 11/16 × 11 5/8 in. (50 × 29.5 cm)
Mount: 27 5/8 in. × 19 3/4 in. (70.2 × 50.2 cm)
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Purchase, The Lauder Foundation, Leonard and Judy Lauder Fund Gift, 2019
Object Number: 2019.190
Rights and Reproduction: © Courtesy of Géza Perneczky / Chimera-Project
Curatorial Department: Photographs

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