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The Hungarian Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale has opened, featuring Endre Koronczi’s exhibition titled Pneuma Cosmic (Cosmic Breath). The exhibition will be open to the public starting May 9.
The exhibition in the Hungarian Pavilion is based on a fictional research project that reveals to the public the various manifestations of the air currents that fill the entire world. The three-part installation explores the artistic possibilities of representing air currents, while drawing parallels between the physical phenomenon and the immaterial spiritual world.
Pneuma Cosmic is a repository of nearly 20 years of collection based on empirical observation, where the challenge is the visualization of an invisible force. We are entering a “museum of breath,” whose subject is “breath, respiration, pneuma,”
said Julia Fabényi, director of the Ludwig Museum and national commissioner for the Biennale, at the pavilion’s opening on Wednesday.
Máté Vincze, Deputy State Secretary for Public Collections and Cultural Development, stated: “It is very difficult to depict breath and slowing down, yet the artist and curator succeeded in doing so in a highly spectacular and eloquent form using three unique techniques.” He noted that
this year’s biennial, titled In Minor Keys, focuses on slowing down and turning inward, “since with a deep breath we can master ourselves, the world around us, and our own souls.”
Luca Cserhalmi, the exhibition’s curator, put it this way: Pneuma Cosmic deals with the phenomena of air currents, the cosmic-scale migration of air masses, which is present in both the microcosm and the macrocosm, “the constant medium that invisibly moves and vitalizes the world.”
The exhibition is a conceptual work composed of temporary installations that draws attention to the complexity of the intuitive experience of the environment. It includes elements of the ventilation system extracted from the floor of the 200-year-old historic building of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, a video installation documenting a year-long walk aimed at finding the most significant sigh, and the pavilion’s breathing wall.
Photo: MTI/Balogh Zoltán
This is complemented by the acoustic element that completes the works: a composition by composer Máté Balogh, which explores the interactions between the transcendent world and nature. Central to the project is the combination of slowness, observation, and abstract, associative thoughts. In addition to its poetic, philosophical language, the exhibition is also closely linked to contemporary discourses on environmental aesthetics and environmental psychology.
Fact
Endre Koronczi, born in 1968 and living in Budapest, is an interdisciplinary artist and a university lecturer at the Institute of Media and Design at Eszterházy Károly Catholic University in Eger. His art is characterized by conceptual thinking and poetic sensitivity. In his works, he explores the dynamics of human relationships, everyday situations, and emotions. For decades, he has been studying the artistic possibilities of visualizing airflow through outdoor experiments and exhibition space models.
Endre Koronczi at the press conference for the Venice Biennale exhibition, held in Budapest on April 22, 2026. Photo: MTI/Balogh Zoltán
For now, the exhibition is open only to art professionals. The general public can view it alongside other exhibitions at the Venice Biennale from May 9 to November 22.
Via MTI, Featured image: MTI/Balogh Zoltán
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