Kata Legrady

The sculptures, photographs, and drawings of Kata Legrady (b. Barcs, Hungary, 1974; lives and works in various cities around the world) confront the viewer with symbols of violence that are at once luxury articles and the objects of infantile desires. Guns are decorated with colorful candies, precious furs, or banknotes in a variety of currencies. Kata Legrady thus illustrates with simple and yet aesthetic means what has shaped the course of world history for millennia, presenting the monstrosities of civilization in the alluring guise of consumerism. The desire for power, for control over others, for mastery of the world is among the most ancient mainsprings of human action. Today, however, weaponry is hardly the most important tool in the exercise of power: it has been complemented and even superseded by capital, assets, and structures of economic dependence. Kata Legrady’s art reflects this state of social affairsa situation in which prosperity and luxury on one side of the great divide equals violence and exploitation on the other. With contributions by Bazon Brock, Jochen Horisch, Wolfgang Ullrich, Lambert Wising, and Peter Weibel as well as a preface by Peter Weibel and Andreas Beitin.