HOMAGE A MADAME BOVARY FOR IMM BUDAPEST

Based on curator Judit Horváth‘s brief to work with the museum‘s collection, the team of DECHEM chose the book Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert with an exceptionally beautiful, hand-made cover. The book was originally brought from France to Budapest in the 1930s. There it received a custom-made cover from marbled paper based on the Japanese suminagashi technique to give it away as a present. Michaela Tomišková and Jakub Janďourek drew a connection to lithyalin glass which also has a marble-like appearance and was invented by the Czech Friedrich Egermann in the 19th century. Intrigued to transfer the book‘s cover to a different material and technique and to work with lithyalin glass for the first time, they decided to create an object around it.

After a process of research, sketching, thinking, discussions as well as modelling and inspired by motifs of the novel‘s story, the team created a mirror which is about past and present, about finding new spaces and recognizing yourself. By adding passageways and other architectural elements they created an increasingly complex illusion of the three-dimensional.

The result is a highly contemporary interpretation of an almost 100-year-old edition of an even older book and it addresses the visitor in a very personal way: “We are living in fast-paced times. Things are changing right in front of our eyes. We feel stressed and sometimes we create a fantasy world inside our heads to avoid living in the present. We want the viewer to become a part of our object and to recognize who they really are. We want them to look into the mirror and to take some time to reflect on themselves and on what they see.”