Endre Tót
LOVE/HATE

For his exhibition at KIF – KUNST IM FENSTER in April 2025, Endre Tót has re-created his work LOVE/HATE from 1972. Originally painted in oil on wood, it was shown as a screen print on wood in the outdoor area of KIF as part of the exhibition. Accompanying this, the signed special edition LOVE/HATE (1972/2025) was also created using the screen printing process.
Endre Tót is one of the most important artists of conceptual art and the mail art movement. His actions and his text and photo works are characterized by subversive wordplay and ironic exaggerations that undermine the logic of political and artistic systems. From the beginning of his artistic career, Tót focused on radical reductions: zeros, missing signs, and ironic statements became his trademark and served as a subtle form of resistance against ideological appropriation.
Tót originally began as a painter and experimented with informal art as well as pop and minimal art influences in the 1960s. In the early 1970s, he turned away from painting and developed his conceptual series of works such as My Unpainted Canvases and TÓTalJOYS, which deal with absence, nothingness, and irony. His mail art activities helped him overcome artistic isolation in Hungary and connect with the international Fluxus movement.
In 1978, he came to West Berlin on a DAAD scholarship, subsequently emigrated to Germany, and thus finally escaped state censorship in Hungary. In 1979, René Block exhibited his work for the first time in his gallery in Berlin—the beginning of a connection that continues to this day. After the political change in Hungary, his works were exhibited in international museums, including the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the Museum Fridericianum in Kassel. In recent years, he continued his performance demonstrations, focusing on his central concepts of absence and joy.