The recent restoration of Budapest’s historic Corvin Palace represents more than the preservation of a significant architectural landmark. Once among Europe’s most modern department stores, the building has been carefully renewed, retaining its original character while being re-established as a venue for contemporary cultural activity.
Within this renewed context, APOLLO Gallery now operates as a space dedicated to contemporary visual art and cultural programming. Its current exhibition, Lust for Life, is on view until 17 July 2026 in Hall 1 and Hall 2.
The exhibition brings together the work of three contemporary Hungarian artists: Attila Kertész, Gábor Szenteleki and Szilárd Gáspár, and examines questions surrounding embodiment, identity and lived experience. Although each artist works in a distinct visual language, their works enter into a sustained dialogue that reflects the range of current Hungarian artistic practice.
Drawing on the philosophical thought of Georges Bataille, the exhibition considers the body as a site where desire, social constraint and personal freedom intersect. Rather than treating the body as a fixed or self-contained entity, it is presented as a shifting and permeable field in which control and release, strength and vulnerability coexist.
The exhibition also engages with Julia Kristeva’s concept of the abject, focusing on threshold experiences in which established categories of identity become unstable and the body takes on altered meaning. Themes of modesty, exposure, eroticism, instinct and physical materiality recur throughout the works, drawing attention to the body’s continuous transformation and temporal condition.
While their approaches differ, Kertész, Szenteleki and Gáspár are united by a sustained interest in the body as a bearer of desire, memory, fragility and identity. Their works establish a considered dialogue between contemporary visual practice and philosophical enquiry, encouraging reflection on the conditions of human existence.
Rather than offering definitive conclusions, Lust for Life invites sustained reflection. Through the work of three contemporary Hungarian artists, the exhibition considers the body not only as physical form, but as a site where identity, vulnerability and freedom remain in ongoing negotiation.
The exhibition is curated by Csenge Czeizer and Nikolett Colette Nagy, whose curatorial approach brings together three distinct artistic positions within a coherent conceptual framework addressing questions of identity, freedom and the human condition.
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