drMáriás – Long Live Dictatorship! / Anniversary exhibition at the Godot Contemporary Art InstitutedrMáriás – Éljen a diktatúra! / Jubileumi kiállítás a Godot Kortárs Művészeti Intézetben
29 January 2026 It opens at 7 p.m. at the Godot Kortárs Művészeti Intézet. drMáriás –
Long live the dictatorship! A large‑scale jubilee exhibition titled ___, which is by the artist 60.
for his birthday, as well as for the 40 anniversary of the existence of the band The Scientists.
is connected.
At the opening Gergely KarácsonyThe mayor of Budapest gives a greeting.
the creator's art Zoltán Rockenbauer the art historian presents.
On the international significance of Dr Máriás Peter Tomaž Dobrila, the Maribori Kibla Kortárs
Multimedia Arts Centre his manager, the curator of the Venice Biennale and Maribor Europe
The CEO of the Kulturális Fővárosa project is speaking.
The Long live dictatorship! not merely a retrospective summary but a presentation of a complex, layered artistic universe. Paintings, characters, visual and verbal motifs, and spatial installations form a unity that outlines dr Máriás distinct, instantly recognisable visual perspective. Here humour is not an illustrative element but a tool: it releases tension and sharpens it simultaneously, while constantly compelling the viewer to reflect.
The exhibition will be realised across 1100 square metres, covering the entire area of the Godot Institute. The material on display spans from early paintings that carry the punk sense of freedom to later works that concentrate political and historical reflections. Particular emphasis is given to earlier unseen paper‑clip images, as well as the artist’s most recent paintings, videos and installations.
drMáriás’s art works in a total art sense: picture, text, music and gesture together create meaning that reinforces each other. In his hand, humour is not an easement but a communication strategy – an entry point into a visual and intellectual space where extremes, bright colours, provocative verbalism and irony combined leave no one indifferent.
"This continuous act of provoking responses is what makes Dr. Máriás' art alive, current, and inevitable in Hungarian contemporary visual art." – said Laczkovich Borbála, the artistic director of the Godot Institute.
The exhibition is intrinsically linked to the 2025 released in December. Long live the dictatorship! titled
to a sculptural art album, which now also takes on a “bodied” form in the shape of an exhibition.
drMáriás (Máriás Béla) painter, writer, musician. From the 1980s onwards he has been a defining figure in the Hungarian alternative and contemporary art scene. His paintings, writings and musical work are closely intertwined: his art is characterised by ironic humour, striking colour and political‑social reflections. He was a founding member and frontman of the = Scientists to the music hall
In his work the questions of Eastern‑European historical experience, identity and freedom appear in a multidisciplinary artistic form.
Curator: Laczkovich Borbála, Kozák Gábor
Curator's assistant: Lukács Gergő
Visitor information:
The exhibition can be visited from Thursday to Sunday 14 to 19 o’clock, between 2026 January 30 and April 30.
Title: 1036 Budapest, Adolf Fényes Street 21