Lőrinc Borsos

Borsos Lőrinc has been an active, fictitious contemporary visual artist since 2008, emerging from the more than fifteen-year-long artistic collaboration between Borsos János (b. 1979, Székesfehérvár) and Lőrinc Lilla (b. 1980, Mór). However, this imaginary entity does not possess a clearly delineable identity, as one of the primary aesthetic pursuits of its creators is precisely the deconstruction and reinterpretation of traditional artistic strategies and positions. This is further evidenced by the fact that the artistic persona they have constructed continuously gains new interpretations and contours through various projects and collaborations or merges into different collaborative frameworks.

The aesthetic thinking associated with the name Borsos Lőrinc is closely connected to the Hungarian and Eastern European neo-avant-garde tradition, while also serving as a significant source of inspiration for younger generations of contemporary visual artists. This is exemplified by their para-institutional and alternative pedagogical approach, which is linked to the intellectual legacy of Miklós Erdély and the INDIGO group and has become known in recent years under the name LEGION. This project provides opportunities for artists from various generations to engage in collective creative processes and participate in community events centered around collaborative drawing. The workshop program is partly based on their early experiences in electronic music and alternative artistic subcultures and partly on a conscious deconstruction of their encounters with charismatic Christian communities.

Collaborative creation already became a defining element of their work in the 2010s. Notable examples include their projects within The Corporation artist group, which they developed together with Erik Mátrai, Gergő Papp, and Gábor Szenteleki, as well as their collaborations with collectives such as Technologie und das Unheimliche (T+U) and Hollow. Additionally, the MMM (MINE MY MIND exhibition, presented at AQB Mines in 2020, is also worth mentioning.

A significant milestone in their career was the multi-phase project Self-Critical Portrait, realized between 2013 and 2016. During this period, their practice shifted away from painting and art object-based artworks towards large-scale, installation-based projects, built environments, and hybrid, mechanical, or organic constructions. Instead of focusing on individual art pieces, their approach moved towards complex environments and speculative world-building. One of the key moments in this shift was the 2016 Nonentity exhibition at the ICA-D in Dunaújváros. In the following years, numerous new projects emerged, such as the 2018 Hermes Collection, created in collaboration with Daniel Hüttler and exhibited at the Excavating Darkness group exhibition at Trafó Gallery.

In 2019, during a residency program in New York, they presented And after the fire came a gentle whisper: SHOW ME YOUR FETISH!, followed by The 3rd Half at the TIC Gallery in Brno later that year. Their subsequent solo exhibition, Kill Your Idols, shown at the former Glassyard Gallery, was entirely centered on speculative world-building and installation-based artistic strategies—an approach that has continued to shape their later works.

One of the most significant results of this speculative turn was the 2023 solo exhibition To the Child of the Future, held at the Ferenczy Museum’s MűvészMalom exhibition space in Szentendre, marking their most extensive institutional presentation to date. This was followed in the spring of 2024 by Narnia is Lie, a solo show at the Hessel Museum (Annandale-on-Hudson, New York), which further deepened their engagement with this artistic direction. Their debut exhibition at acb Gallery, Neo Inertia, took place in the fall of 2024. These projects have solidified Borsos Lőrinc’s position within the conceptualist tradition of Hungarian contemporary art while also executing an internationally relevant artistic shift that reflects on contemporary technological and media transformations.

Borsos Lőrinc and Lőrinc Lilla’s work has been recognized with numerous awards and grants. In 2017, they were finalists for the Leopold Bloom Art Award, and both have been recipients of the Derkovits Scholarship—Lőrinc between 2015 and 2017 and Borsos between 2012 and 2015. They won the Smohay Award in 2012 and the Lánczos Kornél–Szekfű Gyula Scholarship in 2011. Their achievements are further highlighted by winning the Esterházy Art Award in 2009 and the Strabag Painting Prize in 2008, the latter awarded to Lőrinc.

Residency programs have also played a crucial role in their careers. In 2018, they spent three months in New York as part of the ACAX-organized Leopold Bloom Art Award residency, and in the same year, they participated in the Brno Art Residency at the House of the Lords of Kunštát. In 2016, they were awarded a three-month residency through the Visegrad Fund in Banská Štiavnica, as well as a one-month residency at MQ Air in Vienna. In 2012, they spent a month in Lisbon with the support of the Budapest Gallery Creative Grant, where they gathered further inspiration for their artistic practice.

Works by Borsos Lőrinc can be found in several prestigious national and international collections, including the Hungarian National Gallery, Ludwig Museum Budapest, Institute of Contemporary Art in Dunaújváros, Miskolc Gallery at the Herman Ottó Museum, Edwin Scharff Museum in Neu-Ulm (Germany), Esterházy Contemporary Collection in Eisenstadt (Austria), the King Saint Stephen Museum in Székesfehérvár, Strabag Collection in Budapest, and the Irokéz Collection in Budapest and Szombathely.