Index – Culture – The Museum of Illusions has arrived, where we get space on the floor
In fact, every museum is an illusion, as no one is saying that a woman in velvet from head to toe is having a picnic on the grass at eleven in the morning, carelessly throwing her yellow Girardi hat into the grass and overlooking nothing. Just because. Or that Cézanne’s sponge cakes stare at the sky as they look in the picture. Because not. Every work of art, especially if it is an art, is an illusion somewhere, the artist saw the green of the grass, the curl of the cloud, or the damaster that softly folds around the fruit bowl. However, the franchise Museum of Illusions, which opened in Budapest recently, is not an artistic vision, it is approaching from a tangible reality; it shows that there is reality, and we see it as something, though it is not so, only the biology, the physics of the eye, the image-interpreting center of the brain, the visual context, the trick interpret it as one or the other.
Peter Popper said anno: an illusion that we can live without illusions.
In any case, everyone has the illusion of a great life organizer, just not everyone confesses to himself, or maybe he is not even aware. At 3 Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út, in the Museum of Illusions opening from the courtyard of a downtown tenement house, we can give space to our illusions born biologically and physically, and through a number of examples we may be confronted with the fact that a mirror, an oblique line, a well-constructed tricky composition is enough, and we already see everything differently, our brains perceive differently.
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Gallery: Museum of IllusionsPhoto: Gorondy-Novák Edit / Index
The pub stood on its head
We meet Jakab Ingrid, the head of the private museum, at the entrance of the art institution. The guide does not hurt, because although in addition to all the works of art, the instructions for use are also in Hungarian and English, it is much better for someone to add a live explanation. Right at the beginning we find ourselves in an inverted ruin pub, in a place called Púder, painted and designed by the artist Zsili Babos, even the beer would flow back out of the jug, , that is, they are hanging, but fortunately they are fixed. However, this is just a little mood primer, the real fun only starts after that. We start to look, to see – pictures, rooms, objects, spaces follow. And effects.
There are such basic things, as we can already tell from a better elementary school drawing lesson or Vasarely’s explanation, that we see one of the two lines being much longer, if they are located in a certain drawing environment, they are long enough. We also think of two rectangles as much as one is larger, but if we put a check form hanging on them from the picture with a line, we see that they are indeed true. We look into a well up to half a meter deep, its depth is endless with the help of two mirrors, and since its glass plate is transparent, it is excellent to practice moderation of the spatial relationship. Especially if we look up and we see the same infinity there.
Then there is a polygonal mirror room, where we see ourselves infinitely, our infinite number is limited only by our own horizon. We look into a triangular tube, at the end of the tube another looks in, her face is kaleidoscopically seen six times. Or we can use mirrors to play cards with ourselves as if we were playing cards with real partners.
Contra, recount, subcontract, Fedák Sári.
Einstein cannot be missed in such a science-based museum of illusion – not even missing. It has been placed three times in four rows as a sculptural pattern negative, i.e. as a concave head shape, but since the eye and brain are accustomed to seeing everything as convex, i.e. as positive, all we have to do is move away and see the concave Einsters as already convex. It’s unbelievable that we don’t see what’s there, it’s exactly what holds it. How right is it for those who encourage positive thinking, because if we can see everything as it is better for the eyes and the brain, then why not put a little force on it and we could already see and live everyday life through pinker glasses. Then as we walk in front of the Einsteins, he follows us with his gaze, and if we squat down and look at him, he nods at us. In vain, science is immortal.
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Gallery: Museum of IllusionsPhoto: Gorondy-Novák Edit / Index
Cinematic illusions and magic tricks
We drop into the world of movies, sit loosely on the facade of a tenement house on the third-floor window sill, and of course we don’t fall out, because we’re not there, but on the ground, but a sloping mirror gives the impression of we would defy. with our spatiality and gravity. Not that we didn’t know, film is also just a sophisticated world of tricks.
From here we go to the gravity room, where those who are not prepared are dizzy again, the ground is leaning at a strong angle, we don’t, or heck. We’re also pulling the veil off Michael Jackson’s biggest trick.
Then all sorts of magic tricks, rings moving on top of each other, a stick that fits into a hole, a really still, static image spinning on the wall when the biggest throw comes, only for those with a good sense of balance. I myself am dizzy with the only large magic barrel, although all that happens is that I have to cross a five-meter-long metal bridge, which is completely static, but it is surrounded by a cylindrical canvas, and the whole composition has become a mirror. instead, it seems the barrel is endless. Ingrid turns on the machine, the canvas is spinning, I’m done, I can only get halfway there, I don’t dare to shake again. I only take a photo if the barrel doesn’t spin around me. If I hadn’t known it before, it becomes clear now, I see, my sense of balance is not perfect.
And if Rodolfo said, watch my hand because I’m cheating, here he would say: watch their own eyes, their brains, their middle ears, and their sense of balance, because they’re cheating too. The whole person experiences a series of illusions with his or her biological, physical reality, with his or her perception, every minute of the day. The quote from Peter Müller could thus be supplemented as follows: The difference between imagination and illusion is that imagination, when strong and when coupled with faith, is realized. But the illusion never. Because that’s the reality. At least in terms of perception.
(Cover image: Gorondy-Novák Edit / Index)