Várnai Gyula: A jövő menő
As a highlight of its 2026 exhibition season, the Institute of Contemporary Art is presenting a major solo exhibition by Gyula Várnai. Living and working in Dunaújváros, the Munkácsy Prize-winning visual artist is a defining figure of the middle generation of contemporary Hungarian art. In 2017, he represented Hungary at the 57th Venice Biennale with a project connected to Dunaújváros.
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While the “rainbow-coloured” visions of the future have, over the nearly ten years since 2017, transformed into pessimistic and dark-toned collective imaginaries, Gyula Várnai’s passionate commitment to the subject has remained constant. The continued unfolding of its variations is evidenced by his recent bodies of work: at the exhibition My First Steps into the Uncertain, held at acb Attachment in 2021, he set in motion an astronaut landing with heavy, thudding steps onto unfamiliar terrain — a figure that has remained in motion ever since.
At his 2023 exhibition Another Zodiac at Csikász Gallery in Veszprém, his ensemble of objects created with 3D pens and concrete has since evolved through new works and further differentiation. Throughout the 2020s, he has continued to engage enthusiastically with themes and motifs familiar from science fiction: his astronauts, aliens, star maps, spaceships, and robotic figures also provide an expansive playground for his “hyper-creativity” in materials and media, as well as for experimental compositional interplay between abstract and figurative systems, and between fragments of past and present gathered or randomly salvaged over time.
Gyula Várnai’s large-scale solo exhibition on home ground, incorporating his newest works, opens a space into a reality where the future is cool.
Kortárs Művészeti Intézet - Dunaújváros (ICA-D)
Az ICA-D feladata elsődlegesen az, hogy fenntartója, a Modern Művészetért Közalapítvány (MMKA) Alapító Okiratában foglaltaknak megfelelően az MMKA misszióját betöltő programokat valósítson meg. „Az MMKA célja a modern, és a XX-XXI. századi művészet bemutatása és népszerűsítése” (1994). Ennek a missziónak megfelelően az ICA-D vezetése olyan programok futtatására törekszik, amelyek egyfelől a kortárs képzőművészet aktuális helyzetére adekvát, a változó politikai-, gazdasági és kulturális környezetnek megfelelő módon reagálnak, másfelől aktív szerepet játszanak Dunaújváros kultúrájának formálásában.