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HAB's newest free exhibition, Access is Off the Beaten Track, explores the unknown and the shadowy side of consciousness. The exciting exhibition is open from November 26 until mid-February.
The Hungarian Art & Business (HAB) art center, supported by the MBH Bank Art Foundation, is closing this year with an exciting temporary exhibition exploring the unknown and the shadowy side of consciousness, this time presenting works that balance the border between reality and fiction. The exhibition titled Access is off the Beaten Track will explore the experience of darkness, uncertainty and a different perception of reality through the works of twelve renowned international and Hungarian artists, curated by Zsófia Máté and Patrik Steinhauser.
The exhibition, realized as part of the international cooperation between HAB and Steinhauser Gallery, focuses on the creative and productive power of darkness, the reinterpretation of perception and the discovery of hidden meanings.
Through various contemporary aesthetic trends – bioromanticism, ecohorror, posthuman and gothic visuality – the exhibition presents a world full of border situations and perceptual twists, where uncertainty is not an avoidable state, but the primary terrain of discovery and meaning-making.
Based on the book The Weird and the Eerie by British philosopher Mark Fisher, the curatorial concept of the exhibition focuses on the variability of knowledge about reality and juxtaposes works that unfold the borderlands of light and darkness, the body and the unknown, nature and the artificial. The dramaturgy of the works is based on the viewer constantly reinterpreting their own perceptual position, while moving through unusual landscapes, grotesque bodies, organic forms and dystopian visions.
Access is off the Beaten Track: new perceptions and experience
“The exhibition explores the contemporary unrest in which our perception of reality is tilted and the perception of hidden, invisible forces becomes decisive. Confronting the unknown here does not evoke fear, but a kind of strange calm – the realization that diving into the unknown carries the possibility of a completely new perception and experience,” emphasized Zsófia Máté, one of the exhibition’s co-curators.
The exhibition features works by twelve internationally recognized international and Hungarian exhibiting artists – Geneviève Capitanio, Roland Flexner, Martin Gerboc, Ádám Horváth, Adrián Klájó, Eszter Metzing, Mihael Milunović, Chino Moya, Jina Park, Léopold Rabus, Richard Stipl and Sándor Szász – that explore the lack of stability of reality, the strangeness inherent in the familiar, and the creative potential of uncertainty.
“The exhibition creates an opportunity for visitors to build new meanings from their own experiences. We believe that art is at its most powerful when it can lead us into the unknown – and this exhibition offers exactly this courageous search for direction,” added Délia Vékony, HAB’s artistic director.
The free exhibition will be on view in the HAB exhibition spaces from November 26, 2025, to February 15, 2026, where guided tours and other exciting additional programs will also be available.
Source and photos: Hungarian Art & Business
