Gideon Horváth — Liberty!, 2026
Gideon Horváth — Prosperity!, 2026
Gideon Horváth — Glory!, 2026

Gideon Horváth’s sculptures balance precariously among the bronze and marble figures in the garden of the Musée des Beaux-Arts. They engage with sculptural traditions ranging from classical antiquity to the socialist monuments familiar from the artist’s childhood in Budapest. Resembling satyrs, fauns or dancers, his figures recall these traditions, yet they seem hesitant and exposed, having none of the assured bearing of the surrounding monuments. Drawn from mythology, history and allegory, the museum’s historic sculptures represent longheld ideals of beauty, power and virtue. Horváth’s figures, by contrast, are slightly smaller than life-size and modelled in beeswax, whose malleability retains the marks of touch. Porcelain, at once delicate and durable, forms the wings and other elements they carry or wear. Resting on polished metal spheres instead of carved stone plinths, they embody a form of monumentality that is grounded in vulnerability and mutability.

Working primarily through installation and sculpture, Gideon Horváth develops a practice informed by queer theory and shaped by Greco-Roman mythology. Central to his work is the notion of vulnerability, understood as a collective force. The artist seeks to dismantle binary visions of the world – such as the opposition between nature and culture – by challenging the dualistic and hierarchical structures that underpin them.