Gyula Várnaiʼs “Peace on Earth!”exhibition has been relocated to the Ludwig to give the wider Hungarian public the opportunity to see it.

The curator and national commissioner of the project were, respectively, Zsolt Petrányi and Julia Fabényi. Both delivered an opening speech for its premiere at the Ludwig, at which the artist was also present. 

According to his website, Várnai is associated with a group of Hungarian neo-conceptual artists who rose to prominence in the 1990s. He has an intensive academic background in mathematics and physics, and has said both disciplines contribute to his art.  

“Gyula Várnai’s exhibition evokes the ideas of the futurology and the utopias of the past and confronts them with the challenges of the present. His sources are found material and visual elements, which he puts into new contexts in order to shed light on the fact that our vision of the future is the foundation of all the discourses of economics and power, no matter in which era we live in,” said Petrányi. 

The titular piece of the exhibition is a giant neon sign reading “Peace on Earth!” It is Várnai’s nod to his home of Dunaujvaros, where a similar sign (in Hungarian) was present on the tallest building in the city during the Communist era, according to the museum’s blog.   

The exhibition is open to the public until to January 14. More information can be found on the exhibitionʼs page on the Ludwigʼs website or on Gyula Várnaiʼs website.