Star Walker – Exhibition by graphic artist Dóra Keresztes
Although illustration is at the center of Dóra Keresztes' art, during her career spanning more than four decades, she has also been involved in painting, poster design, stamp design, theater set and costume design, and animated filmmaking. Her exhibition at the Kunsthalle focuses on her most recent works from 2025 and primarily on those works that, although related to texts and even previously published as illustrations for them, nevertheless express Dóra Keresztes's autonomous artistic intentions. In addition to her poetry and book illustrations, her animated films and sacred works will also be on display at the exhibition.
Her art represents a complex, symbolically layered world that draws on ancient world-explaining narratives that seek the connection between the human soul and the universe. He draws on Mesopotamian, Christian-mystical, and Eastern cosmological traditions dealing with the origin of celestial bodies and their systems, but his main source of inspiration is Hungarian folk tales, which he reinterprets in a lyrical, grotesque, and spiritual form using the language of contemporary graphic art and the timeless beauty of relief printing. His works recount inner journeys in which the soul travels from the lower world to the celestial, spiritual sphere, during which his figures, or the viewer themselves, undergo a kind of mythical initiation and transformation.
Schedule
His peculiar creatures are human-animal figures that intertwine and merge, carrying humorous yet serious meanings, emerging from the personal and collective unconscious of humanity to create a surreal and fairy-tale-like dream world. They also carry ancient meanings that are meant to show the duality of humans, the peculiarities of our hidden shadow personalities, and the bipolarity of the world. The structure of his works is characterized by a kind of metaphysical conception of space and time, whose basic element is the circle. Figures turning back on themselves, complex yet repeatedly circular formations are created, which can also be interpreted as cosmograms symbolizing the structure and harmony of the universe.
The exquisite beauty of his graphics evokes the world of medieval woodcuts, his sacred works draw on the visuality of Transylvanian coffered ceilings, and his animated films can be interpreted as visual poetry transformed into moving images.
Curator: Gréta Garami
Kunsthalle Budapest
The largest exhibition hall in Budapest, in Heroes Square, just the opposite the Museum of Fine Arts.