{"id":44717,"date":"2026-03-10T15:05:50","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T14:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/?p=44717"},"modified":"2026-03-17T16:37:42","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T15:37:42","slug":"golf-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/golf-stupid\/","title":{"rendered":"Golf, stupid!"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"project":[357],"project_type":[887,725,726,743],"class_list":["post-44717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","project-solitude-blog","project_type-solitude-exchange-network","project_type-formats","project_type-text","project_type-themes"],"acf":{"bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","custom_color_css_variable":"","content_type":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","_acfe_flexible_layout_title":null,"acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"Piotr Sikora: <\/strong>Let\u2019s start with structure of the book, which I understand is the outcome of your residency at Schloss Solitude.<\/span>\r\n\r\nG\u00e1bor Krist\u00f3f: <\/strong><\/span>I\u2019ve been working on the topic of golf for five, maybe six years now, across four shows, and I just want to wrap it up. While working on this quite unobvious topic I gathered a lot of stuff I don\u2019t really exhibit, such as photos, or research materials on the computer that I used for drawing. So I thought: There\u2019s all this material, and I really like the texts you wrote for the exhibition openings \u2013 so maybe it could become a book. I went back to the first exhibition Picnic On A Driving Range,<\/em> which took place in Bansk\u00e1 \u0160tiavnica in 2021.<\/span>\r\n\r\nPS:<\/span> <\/strong>Was it part of the Bansk\u00e1 \u0160tanica residency there?<\/span>\r\n\r\nGK:<\/span> <\/strong>No, not even. It was at the Schemnitz Gallery there cocurated by Vladim\u00edr Beskid. It ended up happening by chance \u2013 not planned as a show about golf at all \u2013 but the lockdown brought some changes. During the pandemic I was walking a lot, everything was closed, and I somehow ended up at this golf club in the hills of Budapest. And it immediately became the topic.<\/span>\r\n\r\nPS: <\/strong>You went down the golf hole?<\/span>\r\n\r\nGK: <\/strong><\/span>Exactly! It was both fascinating and irritating \u2013 these guys playing golf in a private club, complaining about the view, when the view was actually blocks of flats where average people were stuck indoors. I was also fascinated by the landscaping \u2013 this curated, artificial environment. It was love and hate at once, and that tension still keeps me hooked.<\/span>\r\n\r\nThe first show coincided with the centenary of a rather obscure painter \u2013 P\u00e1l Szinyei Merse \u2013 which went completely unnoticed during the pandemic. I started writing diaristic reflections about the pandemic and this golf encounter \u2013 addressing them as letters to that painter, as if explaining to someone 100 years ago what the world looks like now.<\/span>\r\n\r\nFive years passed, and I realized I had to write a new letter \u2013 to update that fictional conversation. So the project became a way of checking my own sanity over time.<\/span>\r\n\r\n "},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","_acfe_flexible_layout_title":null,"acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":false,"img":[44733],"img_gallery_format":false},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","_acfe_flexible_layout_title":null,"acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"PS: <\/strong>I assume you are going to start with letters to Paul and end with a follow-up letter to create some kind of eclipse.<\/span>\r\n\r\nGK: <\/strong><\/span>Yes. However I have to warn you that the book\u2019s structure doesn\u2019t follow the chronology of exhibitions. It follows how I encountered the topic \u2013 a process of digging into the core of it, going down the golf hole<\/em>.<\/span>\r\n\r\nThe first chapter is about observing the phenomenon of golf from the outside \u2013 na\u00efve fascination mixed with anger. The second chapter deals with borders: between the manicured golf course and the wild forest next to it. Golf courses are hermetically sealed worlds \u2013 membership, fences, even underground nets so moles can\u2019t surface. They use ultrasound to scare away birds. You have to fight nature to maintain that illusion of eternal youth.<\/span>\r\n\r\nGolf balls, though, escape \u2013 they radiate out into the landscape, invading nature. They become geological sediment. Fields next to golf courses are full of them. This reminded me of a text by David Haskell, a biologist who observes one patch of land for a year in the book The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature<\/em>. In it he finds two golf balls and debates whether to remove them. In the end he leaves them, imagining they\u2019ll become part of the sediment over geological time. I love that idea \u2013 that even artificial objects eventually integrate into nature.<\/span>\r\n\r\nThat links to my third chapter. I realized nothing is truly synthetic; even what we call artificial is still made of the same materials that existed since the Big Bang. You can decompose and recombine, but it\u2019s still the same matter.<\/span>\r\n\r\nThat thought \u2013 together with research at the Helmholtz Center where they synthesize materials for new technologies \u2013 led me to imagine tiny universes hidden inside golf balls, microcosmic worlds within the game. Going down that rabbit hole, you end up thinking on a planetary scale again.<\/span>\r\n\r\n "},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","_acfe_flexible_layout_title":null,"acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":true,"img":[44723,44721],"img_gallery_format":false},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","_acfe_flexible_layout_title":null,"acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":true,"img":[44735,44931],"img_gallery_format":false},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","_acfe_flexible_layout_title":null,"acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"PS: <\/strong>Zooming in and zooming out. Sounds like the mushroom hunting we did yesterday in the woods.<\/span>\r\n\r\nGK: <\/strong><\/span>Exactly. You feel connected to the universe while peeping through the tiniest hole in the dead wood. This approach helped me make peace with golf \u2013 at first I condemned it, hated golfers, but now I see it differently. I\u2019m not part of that culture, but I can grow something on top of it \u2013 my own \u00bbdung,\u00ab my mushrooms. Speaking of mushrooms \u2013 in the second chapter, mushrooms start appearing among the golf balls. They look similar, spherical, sprouting in unexpected places \u2013 symbols of another form of life, something between plant and animal. Maybe mushrooms even arrived on Earth on a golf ball shot from a galactic course! That\u2019s why golf balls have dimples \u2013 to travel through space faster (laughs<\/em>).<\/span>\r\n\r\nPS: <\/strong>The first, second, third chapters are set. What comes next?<\/span>\r\n\r\nGK: <\/strong><\/span>The fourth \u2013 a detour \u2013 deals with golf balls as seeds rather than sediment. They fall to the ground and germinate. Each is unique, like DNA. For that chapter I created columns made from cut golf balls for a show Continental Weeds<\/em> at Kiscell Museum, which is near a golf course in Budapest. The driving range faces the castle gardens. There were jokes that celebrities aimed their shots at the museum \u2013 so I took that literally. These columns of \u00bbfailed shots\u00ab became plants \u2013 recomposed collections of lost balls planted around abandoned courses. And finally, the last and most important chapter: the founding of the Untitleist Club. That was the breakthrough \u2013 a way to coexist with golf culture by hijacking its structure, creating a parallel community. The club can focus on mushroom picking, urban golfing, community work \u2013 whatever grows from the same soil.<\/span>\r\n\r\nThis idea emerged while preparing The Greenkeeper\u2019s Nightmare <\/em>exhibition in Budapest Gallery. I realized many influences from other artists were already inside me \u2013 their methods, aesthetics, instincts. So I invited them to join. For each collaborator I designed a one-on-one experience: sneaking into a golf course at night, lying on the green, listening to the grass. It became clear that golf was just a metaphor, a vehicle for connection. Even now, when I take someone to a golf course \u2013 recently in Stuttgart \u2013 new insights always emerge. The work isn\u2019t about golf; it\u2019s about the human impulse behind it.<\/span>\r\n\r\nPS: <\/strong>It\u2019s fascinating how you adopt the existing structure only to a certain extent, then subvert it through subtle modifications that generate a new collective meaning.<\/span>\r\n\r\nGK:<\/span> <\/strong>Yes, exactly. Golf itself can be read as a model of society \u2013 built by the wealthy, regulated, obsessed with order and suspended youth. It\u2019s fake freedom with strict rules and uniforms. At first it frightened me, but now I see it as human nature. Golf began as shepherds playing with balls in Scotland \u2013 innocent fun. Over time it grew into a neoliberal monster. The game isn\u2019t the problem; it\u2019s what it became.<\/span>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","_acfe_flexible_layout_title":null,"acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"img_gallery":false,"img":[44725],"img_gallery_format":false},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","_acfe_flexible_layout_title":null,"acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"has-bg-grey","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"

G\u00e1bor Krist<\/strong>\u00f3f<\/strong> <\/span>is a visual artist based in Budapest. His work often starts with wandering, collecting, and paying attention to overlooked systems \u2013 from golf courses and lost golf balls to industrial color standards and powder-coated surfaces. Moving between sculpture, research, publishing, and site-specific interventions, he is interested in how rules, materials, and landscapes quietly shape behavior and imagination. His projects unfold slowly, combining humor with critical observation and a fascination for things that almost disappear.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Piotr Sikora<\/span> <\/strong>is a critic and curator of contemporary art whose practice is rooted in analyzing the grand narratives, stereotypes, prejudices, and superstitions tied to the regional specificities of Central and Eastern Europe.\u00a0He draws inspiration from pop culture and awkwardness, saunas, fried cheese, mycology, and camp.\u00a0In addition, he works at Museum of Art and Design Bene\u0161ov,\u00a0co-curates the art reality show GASTROFAZA, raises two sons, and obsessively rides his bike.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n "}],"intro_preview_headline":"Golf, stupid!","intro_preview_txt":"Curator Piotr Sikora and artist and Solitude Fellow G\u00e1bor Krist\u00f3f met after two days of intense mycological exploration in the forest next to Akademie Schloss Solitude to discuss golf. G\u00e1bor elaborated on the book he was working on during his residency, titled \u00bbThe Untitleist Handbook \u2013 A Guided Detour,\u00ab which will encompass five years of experience with this unique sport, which was invented by flamboyant Scottish shepherds. <\/span>Taking as their point of departure the well-known adage attributed to Mark Twain \u2013 \u00bbGolf is never about golf; it is always about something else\u00ab \u2013 they traced how the sport shapes landscapes, what might lie on the far side of a putting green, how life could have arrived on Earth aboard a golf ball, and the connection between golf and mushrooms.<\/span>","intro_preview_img":44727,"post_id_old":"","post_author":null,"post_subtitle":"Piotr Sikora in conversation with G\u00e1bor Krist\u00f3f ","post_preview_img_hide_on_single":false,"post_txt_old":"","post_pdf":"","post_copyright":"ccl_default","translated_post":false,"translations":null,"post_copyright_individual":"","post_related_posts":[44766,44746,43220],"related_posts_post":[43504]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44717"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44944,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44717\/revisions\/44944"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person\/43504"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43220"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44746"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"project","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project?post=44717"},{"taxonomy":"project_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project_type?post=44717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}