Ultramarine used to be better, or at least it carried more weight. Its value once measured wealth and devotion at the same time, since the amount of ultramarine used in a home altar painting reflected both financial capacity and spiritual commitment. Altarpieces were not always visible. They remained closed during ordinary days and opened on specific occasions, revealing painted scenes in moments of ritual, celebration, or heightened attention. The act of opening was never neutral. It marked a shift from the everyday into a space of meaning, reflection, and shared focus.

Today galleries echo these structures in another form. They function as contemporary temples where artworks operate like mascots or lucky talismans for the soul. They gather attention, hold projection, and invite us into temporary systems of belief. Art may not promise salvation, but it can make life more vivid, more bearable and more connected. It allows for movement, for gathering, and for moments of joy where we can linger, look, and even dance around contemporary altars.

UNITY IS MOVEMENT brings together seven international artists including János Brückner, Mamali Shafahi and Domenico Gutknecht, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, Áron Lőrincz, Tincuta Marin, and Kata Tranker around the historical form of the winged altarpiece. Reimagined through contemporary practices, the works draw on the visual language of devotion while opening it toward plural and often ambiguous systems of belief. Taking its title from a work by Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, the exhibition asks what we worship today and what produces reverie, attachment, or faith, as well as which forms of belief have the capacity to hold us together.