Catch Pneumonia While the Billboards Say You're Going to Melt

Hungary has something for gigantor posters, and the @®© Giant Poster Exhibition at 56-osok tere, which kicked off last Friday, is an annual embodiment of this. With a plurality of the posters dedicated in some way to global warming, it was thoroughly fitting that the opening day festivities were delayed due to cold weather and rain, something Index enjoyed pointing out. Nonetheless there were still plenty of posters with other messages to take in, even though as one poster proclaimed "this exhibition is becoming increasingly unimaginative." That might not be the best translation for the word igénytelen, but it's pretty much what the poster declared.

To be honest, it felt like too many of the posters were trying to say something serious with respect to the environment, thus missing the whole point of poster exhibits of the past, which focused more on biting social commentary that made you laugh in the process. This year, the humor was simply absent in many of the pieces, as it appeared either the selection committee found itself feeling too serious, or the submitting artists did. Instead of trying to get a message across by getting a laugh out of me, it seemed as if too many of the pieces were trying to lecture me. I know global warming is happening; I don't need over a dozen posters with varying degrees of seriousness to tell me it is. Especially when it's pissing down and unseasonably cold. The billboard exhibition last October dedicated to the 1956 revolution found a lot more tasteful humor in its subject than the current one did.

Getting good pictures also frequently proved difficult, as not only was there a huge mass of people present, but many of these people were simply inconsiderate and parked themselves right in front of the posters, thus making picture-taking that much more inconvenient.

Probably as a result of the deepening political divide, and in an effort at helping to bridge that, such as the "Szeretem Magyarországot Klub" ("I Love Hungary Club") bit from late last year, this year saw far less overtly political billboards. A few were quite subtle, whereas the ones featuring Fidesz Chairman Viktor Orbán or Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány featured both, with the poster above urging them to start a dialogue. The single exception was the poster below featuring the prime minister, which used a pun derived from the name of the French newspaper "Le Monde," which if read in Hungarian sounds like the equivalent of the English word "resigns."

Despite this, there were still plenty of posters that got a chuckle out of me, and going to check it out before the exhibition ends on the 18th, is worth your time. The following poster, where the writing on the shields states "your ad here!" was my favorite, because it's open to so many different interpretations.

There were also some with no pretenses of being overtly serious, and a few that just left me confused, as there usually are each year. Some people make posters so profound, no one can understand them.

Lastly, here was one of the posters that still hearkened back to the general goofiness of years past. The poster, titled "Clear Signs," simply states "Careful, My Shovel is Fucking Huge!" Indeed, it is.