The Debut Exhibition of the KOMOREBI Group
As part of the exhibition, the works of Brigitta B. Horváth are presented alongside selected contemporary artworks by Start Gallery Budapest artists Gábor Tobak and Angelika Fekete (Analóg Angelika). Through this dialogue between artists, the exhibition explores how the wabi-sabi philosophy represented by Horváth in Hungary inspires creators across related artistic disciplines.
The exhibition creates an intimate encounter between imperfection, fragility, atmosphere, and contemporary visual culture—highlighting how Japanese-inspired aesthetics can resonate within the language of independent contemporary art in Budapest, Hungary.
Founded in December 2021, Start Gallery Budapest is a community-based contemporary commercial gallery and creative space dedicated to promoting artistic practice, supporting emerging independent artists through first solo exhibitions, and reviving a civic art collecting culture through accessible contemporary artwork, sketches, studies, and works by new voices entering the art market.
Brigitta B. Horváth has spent nearly thirty years researching the organic forms of plants and translating these observations into the field of contemporary metal and jewelry art. Working within this artistic philosophy, she creates applied art objects inspired by botanical structures, drawing not only from her own studies of nature, but also from the iconic bud photographs of Karl Blossfeldt and the visual world of Katsushika Hokusai.
Last year, Horváth received an individual artist grant from the Hungarian National Cultural Fund, which enabled the creation of a new jewelry collection inspired by the principles of mokume-gane and the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi. For decades, themes of metamorphosis and transformation have remained central to her practice. Through close observation of natural processes, she explores how life emerges from seemingly lifeless matter, seeking to guide her own works—whether sculptures, jewelry pieces, or handcrafted lamps—through similar formal evolutions.
Her contemporary artworks merge organic sensitivity with functional design, creating objects that carry both poetic and everyday presence.
Gábor Tobak was invited to continue his long-standing artistic exploration of impermanence and the fragile beauty of natural decay. Following the debut group exhibition, new works from the series—highly anticipated by collectors—will be presented at Start Gallery Budapest during the winter season of 2022.
In his untitled series, Tobak frames fragments of aged wooden objects, weathered beams, and worn rural ceiling structures, elevating the textures of decay, erosion, and time into autonomous contemporary artworks. Through these carefully selected materials, he reveals the quiet dignity and visual richness hidden within deterioration itself.
For more than twenty years, Tobak has continuously redefined his relationship with wood as a material, searching for ways to express his deepest respect for the natural world through contemporary artistic practice in Budapest, Hungary.
Angelika Fekete (Analóg Angelika)’s introspective paintings are deeply personal attempts to confront reality with honesty and directness—something rarely achievable within the rhythms of everyday life. Built through repetitive gestures and meditative processes, her contemporary artworks seek to dissolve seemingly fixed situations and interrupt the instinctive “autopilot mode” through which we often navigate daily existence.
Within her artistic philosophy, things possess no inherent value in themselves; value is compulsively projected onto them by consciousness. This tension—between how reality is imagined to be and how it is actually experienced—becomes one of the central sources of suffering. Learning to peacefully inhabit the distance between imagined and lived reality is, for the artist, one of the highest forms of freedom. The perfection of imperfection becomes liberation itself.
Wabi-Sabi: The Beauty of Imperfection
Contemporary Art Exhibition in Budapest, Hungary
📍 Start Gallery Budapest
15–17 Margit Boulevard, Budapest, Hungary
📅 Planned opening: September 22, 2022 – 6:00 PM
Opening speech by László Sári, orientalist and researcher of Eastern cultures.
Live performance by Afronauta Handpan Artist.
The exhibition explores the philosophy of Wabi-Sabi—the beauty found within irregularity, imperfection, fragility, and transience. Rooted in Zen Buddhism, Wabi-Sabi has evolved into one of the defining concepts of Japanese aesthetics:
“Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.”
Wabi is often associated with rustic simplicity and restrained elegance, applicable both to natural forms and human-made objects. Sabi, meanwhile, refers to the discovery of beauty through aging and imperfection—the quiet poetry formed through the passage of time.
The exhibition reflects on nature’s endless cycles of transformation: the tree growing from a seed, expanding into a vast canopy, eventually falling, being repurposed into homes and objects, then slowly decaying once again. Fragments drift through rivers, weather under sun and rain, and gradually transform into organically sculpted structures of breathtaking irregularity.
This same worldview is embodied in the jewelry pieces created using the ancient Japanese mokume-gane technique, where layered metals fuse together in wood-grain-like patterns through a hidden and highly complex process. These objects carry the spirit of continuously transforming nature—where everything is interconnected, and even the smallest plant reveals deeper truths through its silent language.
Artists Featured
- Brigitta B. Horváth
- Angelika Fekete (Analóg Angelika)
- Gábor Tobak
About Start Gallery
Start Gallery is a contemporary community-commercial gallery and creative space dedicated to supporting independent artists, first solo exhibitions, and accessible contemporary artwork for emerging collectors.
🌐 startgaleria.hu
📞 +36 30 913 7772
Brigitta B. Horváth’s Instagram and website are available online.
Angelika Fekete’s Instagram and website are available online.
Gábor Tobak does not use social media; his artistic practice can only be followed through the official platforms of Start Gallery Budapest.