MATTHIAS MEGYERI
Born in 1973, Matthias Megyeri studied graphic design with a focus on political posters at the Karlsruhe University of Design and critical design at the Royal College of Art in London. Megyeri was Fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude Stuttgart, and taught as a guest professor at the University of the Arts in Berlin. His works are represented in the Museum of Modern Art New York and the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest. He is based in Stuttgart and London.
With a background in visual communication and critical design, Megyeri’s work characteristically derives from a genuine interest in public space as a medium that holds the possibility for an open democratic discourse. His installations and interventions compell through ambivalence rather than dogma.
In his artistic practice Megyeri reflects contemporary developments in society and translates his observations back into the public realm through the technique of alienation (Ostranenie). Megyeri is interested in how the human mind produces practical solutions for contemporary psychological illnesses such as paranoia and the fear of crime. Through his multi-layered research and conceptual artistic approach the visual language of cultural, social and psychological aspects of protection and privacy is revealed and articulated.
To date, Megyeri’s work has spanned the artistic and commercial sectors. With Sweet Dreams Security®, his commercial home security company and brand established in 2003, Megyeri proposes a climate change for our individual approaches to the “institution of security”. He demands to rethink the way the perception of security is traditionally triggered and creats a line of remarkable (exceptional) alternative products, all by a simple gesture. The gesture of a friendly address apparently reverses fear by simply smiling, sometimes literally, sometimes conceptually, and positioning the passers-by not as potential criminals but as potential friends. The strangers who pass by the homes secured with Megyeri’s fences or doors locked by his bear-faced lockers are exposed (confronted with) to the expression of smile – “they” become “we” and vice versa.
Since 2006, five works from the Sweet Dreams Security® line have been part of the New York Museum of Modern Art permanent collection.
