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Exhibition Guide

From contemporary artworks to archival documentary photographs, from cookbooks to children’s book illustrations – the current exhibitions of Debrecen’s museums, galleries, and cultural institutions cover a wide range of interesting topics, so it’s worth browsing the offerings to make sure you don’t miss any of them!

BÉNYI GALLERY

Fundamentum | Exhibition of contemporary painter Olivér Szax
Olivér Szax was born in 1975 in Esztergom. His first master was the painter Ernő Tolvaly, who gave him a lot of inspiration in the field of conceptual painting. He embedded this experience and vision as a determining basis in his early minimalist-geometrical and later realistic series, which mixed elements with abstraction. In his most recent works, this conceptualist approach is reinforced and, starting from traditional painting, seeking new ways of expression and constantly experimenting, he creates his own symbolism by stripping technique and expression down to their ‘foundations’, thus presenting the current problems of our time and the questions that fundamentally determine our future and demand answers.

Venue – Bényi Gallery (Hunyadi u. 1-3.)
Open to visitors – 9th June 2022


DÉRI MUSEUM

egyediLEG
Subjective selection from the collections of the Déri Museum

The Déri Museum’s ZeitLEG exhibition presents the most unique works of art from the museum’s collections in a special arrangement, selected according to a unique perspective and from an unusual point of view.

Venue – Déri Museum, Zoltai Lajos Hall
Open to visitors – until 25th June 2022


DEBRECEN HOUSE OF LITERATURE AND MEDGYESSY FERENC MEMORIAL EXHIBITION

In Memoriam Szilárd Borbély

A temporary exhibition of prints by István Tamus
The graphics on display are inspired by the poetic and literary world of Szilárd Borbély’s texts and personal memories.

Location – House of Literature and Medgyessy Ferenc Memorial Museum in Debrecen (Péterfia u. 28.)
Open to visitors – until 29th May 2022

Elefántfogó (Elephant Catcher)

A temporary exhibition of works by Alexandra Grela, illustrator, painter
Children’s and fiction illustrations with a special atmosphere for all ages. While children will be enthralled by fairy-tale illustrations, adults will be captivated by illustrations of poems by Endre Ady and János Pilinszky.

Location – Debrecen House of Literature and Medgyessy Ferenc Memorial Museum (Péterfia u. 28.)
Open to visitors – until 3rd July 2022


MODEM

Határeset (Border Line)

In some ways, Határeset is a continuation of the 2018 exhibition “These are our best years”?, which brought together works by emerging Hungarian artists. The exhibition presents works by fourteen young artists from five countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Romania), most of which were created for this occasion.

The title Határeset (Border Line) was inspired by the novel by Péter Hunčík, a Hungarian psychiatrist living in Slovakia, which tells the story of the region’s twentieth-century history through the inhabitants of a small Slovak town with a mixed population living on the border. The term refers to the fact that the drawing of concrete borders has always been a cardinal issue in East-Central Europe. On the other hand, it has always been difficult to decide whether the region belongs to the West or the East. This title was also chosen because it does not contain the somewhat self-ironic stereotype of the ‘West’.

The exhibiting artists are members of a generation socialised in a globalised world, but at the same time inevitably influenced by regionality in many different aspects of their lives. An important question is to what extent this also affects their identity and how this is reflected in their work.

Venue – MODEM (Baltazár Dezső tér 1.)
Open to visitors – until 29th May 2022

HOLNEMVÁROS

Temporary exhibition
A Joint exhibition of the Déri Museum and MODEM Centre for Modern and Contemporary Art, displaying a selection of ninety photographs from the Déri Museum’s Photographic Collection. present, a collection of images from the history of the city. In the second part of the exhibition, the familiar alien perspective of the city’s inhabitants is complemented by the intuitively alien perspective of contemporary artists, as six contemporary artists (Szabolcs Barakonyi, Kincső Bede, Mária Chilf, Viola Fátyol, Olga Kocsi, and Dorottya Szonja Koltay), who have already dealt with photographic memory in their work, created works for the occasion reflecting on images selected from the collection.

Location – MODEM (Dezső Baltazár Square 1.)
Open to visitors – until 5th June 2022


CSOKONAI LITERARY LABORATORY

At the dawn of a new world
István Tisza Memorial Exhibition

The exhibition is free to visit every Friday with advance registration!

Registration – www.derimuzeum.hu
Location – Csokonai Literary Lab (Debrecen, Kossuth u. 1.)
Open to visitors – 31ST December 2022


GREAT FOREST WATER TOWER

Find relaxation and tranquillity with Corpus Vocale’s Fine Art. Luc

Maes admits – “The more I know about a person, the better I can photograph him. I capture people’s true emotions and the purity of the body.” The artist started photography as a teenager with his analogue camera. In the late 1980s, he met the Bruges photographer Greta Buyssel, who was quite an inspiration for his artistic experience and knowledge. In his earlier years, he experimented with landscapes and still life, which won him his first prize in the Herm Photo photography competition. More recently, he has begun to commit himself to seek model placements. In 2012, his images were on display at the Sony World Photography Awards in London and Times Square in New York, and he was nominated for the International Fine Art Photography Awards.

The programme is supported by the Flemish Government. The exhibition is free of charge.

Venue – Water Tower of the Great Forest (Pallagi út 7.)
Open to visitors – until 22ND May 2022


BELGA ÉTTEREM (Resturant)

Flanders on the Menu – Exhibition of Historical and Modern Cookbooks I ALL-IN Debrecen
The Dukes of Burgundy created rich gastronomy in Flanders, which was also oppressed during centuries of occupation. The 19th-century bourgeois cuisine was able to compete with Parisian cuisine, and in the 20th century, Ons Kookboek (Our Cookbook) was the cooking bible for anyone who wanted to learn basic Flemish recipes and young traditions. At the beginning of the 21st century, the focus is once again on regional food, with hours of TV every week showing chefs preparing dishes, and thus cultivating traditions in their own special and joyful way. And this is precisely the strength of Flemish cuisine – it respects and renews tradition while preserving the most sophisticated and ordinary form of civilisation – gastronomy. This mini-exhibition of Flemish cookery books (historical, regional, festive) is designed not only to introduce visitors to this rich culinary art but also to put them to work – visitors are given recipes to prepare a dish. The best photos of homemade dishes based on recipes with the hashtag #allindebrecenflandria will be awarded a prize.

The programme is supported by the Flemish Government. The exhibition is free of charge.

Location – Belgian Restaurant (29 Piac u.)
Open to visitors – 31st May 2022


HOLLAND-FLAMAND KÖZPONT

Illias Teirlinck & Broos Stoffels – The Capital of Brussels exhibition I ALL-IN Debrecen
llias Teirlinck, photographer, and Broos Stoffels, graphic designer, were invited to Debrecen by the Dutch-Flemish Centre to present their work as part of the ALL-IN Debrecen Flemish Cultural Days. For this occasion, the creative duo started a new collaboration. They both live and work in Brussels, the capital of Belgium. Brussels is literally and figuratively the epicentre of all that is Flemish and Belgian. The duo decided to make the capital the main subject of their project.

Brussels is known as the capital of both Belgium and Europe, but it is less well known as the capital of Flanders, even though the latter is not located in the Brussels region. This ambiguity, which extends to both the capital and the structure of their country, prompts them to explore the contradictions and absurdities of their surroundings, namely the mad urban chaos that is Brussels itself. In their artistic conception, they see Belgium as the capital of Brussels, not the other way round. That is why the project is called “Brussels Capital”.

Illias and Broos followed the route of the hop-on/hop-off tourist buses, which took them to the main sights of Brussels. They followed this route on foot and by bus, documenting the streets and the narrow streets instead of the sights. They wanted to reveal the honest face of Brussels and show the beauty of the city without irony.
The project resulted in eclectic (photo)graphics, both in scale and form, that are suitable for documenting a multicultural society. In addition, the search for the way plays a major role in the exhibition material; this aspect is very much present in the Brussels milieu because of bilingualism. In the wake of the pandemic and the health measures that followed, this search for the way has become even more pronounced in the capital.

Venue – Holland-Flamand Centre (Batthyány u. 24.)
Open to visitors – until 16th July 2022


VOJTINA BÁBSZÍNHÁZ

The umbrella is not an umbrella – playing with objects
The fourth stage of the Vojtina Puppet Theatre’s exhibition series entitled BORDERS, like the previous ones, awaits the audience with unusual solutions and visual elements. The themes of the new exhibition are inspired by the boundlessness of playfulness, the freedom of transformability, the possibility of creating something out of something, different from the usual, and the many wonders of metamorphosis.

Venue – Vojtina Puppet Theater (Kálvin tér 13.)
Open to visitors – from 16th May to 19th June 2022


GALÉRIA21

Unfold
Ernő Dániel exhibition
Location – Gallery 21 (Simonffy u. 21.)

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