1983-1985

Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts, animation department, Budapest, HU

1977-1985

Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, painter department, Ignác Kokas's mastreclass, Budapest, HU

László László Révész is difficult to categorise as a visual artist: he was first and foremost a figurative painter, but also a performer, video artist and a leading art teacher. Born in Budapest in 1957, his mother was an optician and his father a mechanical engineer. Performativity was a dominant feature of his childhood: his parents were striving for a career in the theatre, they had actor friends, they regularly went to the Opera; as a first year of high school he had already seen a Peter Brook play. His first experiments in performance were also in high school. In 1979, while attending Ignác Kokas’s painting class at the Academy of Fine Arts, he gave performances together with András Böröcz. The duo defined the Hungarian art scene of the 1980s as the „theatre of painters” and became internationally significant, being invited to participate in the performance section of the eighth documenta in Kassel, among others. In parallel to his studies in painting, he was a member of the INDIGO group led by Miklós Erdély, and from 1983 he was a student of Marcell Jankovics at the College of Applied Arts, majoring in animation. At the University of Fine Arts, he was head of department from 2009, and between 2013 and 2015 he created two performances with high school students in his experimental art troupe.

As much as his thinking was intertwined with the theatre, he was also deeply interested in mediatised reality. He was already up to date with computers in the seventies. In the mid-eighties he made his first computer graphics, in which he explored the significance of the computer for the image - a theme he also took up in parallel in his painting. Also in the early eighties, he began making experimental films. In the early nineties, he experimented with the most modern techniques in his animations, and in the twenties he made interactive installations. Already in the early years of his career, his attention was exceptionally wide-ranging, and this thinking on several levels remained the foundation of his creative career: he opened his painting exhibitions with a performance reflecting on the exhibition, and he repeatedly exhibited his works in different media in a coherent installation. He was a painter, but his painting cannot be approached without considering how much else he created outside the medium of painting - all this is constantly intertwining.

2024

Big Picture, Erika Deák Gallery, Budapest, HU

 

2016

Gulli Vera, Liget Gallery, Budapest, HU

 

2013

Gap stories, video screening at MUSA, Vienna, A

 

2009

'My Sky, My Sixties', Kiscelli Múzeum, Budapest, HU

 

2002

Poppies on the Palatinus, Ludwig Museum, Budapest, HU

 

1993

Tudomásulvétel, Kiállítási Csarnok-Műcsarnok, Budapest, HU

2016

Intrigantes incertitudes, Muse des Art Moderne, Sant Etienne, France
Meantime, Zwischenzeit, Eközben, Fuga, Budapest, Hungary

 

2013

TIME IS LOVE, 6 Sazmanab Platform for Contemporary Arts, Teheran, Iran

 

2012

10th Art Stays Festival - DISPLAY - Europe pavilion, ECC Maribor 2012, Ptuj, Slovenia

 

2011

OK.Video FLESH 5th Jakarta International Video Festival, Indonesia UnaVisita, Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti, Torino, Italy

 

2010

Fragile, The Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejon, South-Korea

 

2008

Central Europe Revisited II, Esterhazy Palace, Eisenstadt, Austria

Micro Narratives, Musée d'Art Moderne, Saint-Etienne, France

 

2005

The Giving Person, Palazzo delleArti, Naples, ItalyConflict, Slought Foundation, Philadelphia, USA

 

2004

Brooklyn Euphoria, Volume, NYC, USA

 

2003

Aura, Millenáris, Budapest, Hungary

 

2002

Bildbetrachtung, H. Quinque-Wessels, Berlin, Germany

 

1996

The Butterfly Effect, SCCA Annual Exhibition, Műcsarnok, Budapest, Hungary

 

1992

24e Festival International de la Peinture, Chateau-Musee de Cagnes-Sur- Mer, France

 

1987

Dawn, documenta8, Kassel, Germany

 

2018

Mihály Munkácsy Prize

 

1996–1997

E.M.A.R.E. scholarship, Werkleitz

 

1994–1995

Eötvös Scholarship, San Francisco-New York

 

1995–1996

Collegium Hungaricum Rome scholarship

 

1993

Meryll-Hart Prize, Los Angeles

 

1992

Smohay Prize

 

1990

Digitart National Computergraphics Festival, Budapest, II. prize

 

1984

Canada Council, Visiting Artist

 

1984–1987

Gyula Derkovits Scholarship