GRÓF Ferenc: Academy, Bourse, Museum, 2019–2023

enamel panel, 85 x 100 cm

This prohibitory sign, based on the representation of neo-classicist buildings, deconstructs and analyses the consensus concept of the pictogram. While it constitutes a seemingly simple pictorial program, it can/does lead quite far, for it prompts the question: from where does this apparent equivalence of pictogram (and building-structure) originate? What is this robust form of ancient ancestry—radiating security, strength and power—the symbol and “temple” of? What is the underlying software—the financial, cultural or power dynamics—that has the capacity to once again organise the randomly scattered and patterned geometric elements of the blown-up pictograms, into these unified (functioning) structures of identical form, complete with columns resting on the steps and the crowning element of the tympanum?