+ Tihamér Novotny: The Winning Strategy – The Art of Kristóf Ázbej, Magyar Művészet 2022/4, [English translation]
+ Novotny Tihamér: A nyerő stratégia. (The Winning Strategy) – Tanulmány Ázbej Kristóf művészetéről, Magyar Művészet 2022/4, [Hungarian original]
PROJECT 1/4:
THE BIGGEST MAP OF HUMAN ENDEAVOUR > A Large-Scale Artwork Project + An Ever-Growing Mega-Frieze + A Worldwide Touring Exhibition — in the Making — THE PROJECT DOSSIER [PDF, English]
The Glass Bead Game is thus a mode of playing with the total contents and values of our culture; it plays with them as, say, in the great age of the arts a painter might have played with the colors on his palette. All the insights, noble thoughts, and works of art that the human race has produced in its creative eras, all that subsequent periods of scholarly study have reduced to concepts and converted into intellectual property — on all this immense body of intellectual values the Glass Bead Game player plays like the organist on an organ. And this organ has attained an almost unimaginable perfection; its manuals and pedals range over the entire intellectual cosmos; its stops are almost beyond number. Theoretically this instrument is capable of reproducing in the Game the entire intellectual content of the universe. (Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game, 1943)
[The aspiration] to fashion an image of the world that will capture its infinite variety and richness […] crops up throughout the history of art and humanity. (Massimiliano Gioni, Curator of the 2013 Venice Biennale)
If you are to venture to interpret the past you can do so only out of the fullest exertion of the vigour of the present: only when you put forth your noblest qualities in all their strength will you divine what is worth knowing and preserving in the past. (Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life, 1874)
MUSÉE X-POINT-ZÉRO
In 1981, Kristóf Ázbej founded Musée X-Point-Zéro (Grotto One), an artist-run space in Bagneux, a suburb of Paris. Over the following fifteen years, until 1996, he developed an expansive collage covering the interior walls of the studio. The mosaic of tens of thousands of images forms a richly coloured, encyclopaedic panorama shaped by a singular aesthetic — a dense, layered system of cultural accumulation that functions as a saturated pictorial archive.
Musée X-Point-Zéro, the artist’s studio near Paris. Click on the image above to start the virtual tour. 3D visualisation by Vision Graphics, Budapest.
ARTWORK INFORMATION
Title:
The Biggest Map of Human Endeavour —
The Initial
Segment
Installation title: Musée X-Point-Zéro
Alternative titles: Grotto One, The Great Wall of
Human Adventure, Memory Motel, The Big Memory Generator, Eulogium
Memorabilia
Date: 1981–1996
Medium: Double-sided collage
Materials: Printed papers, transparencies, adhesive
tapes, ink, canvas
Dimensions (original work): 230 × 2150 cm
Installation dimensions (minimum display): 2.8 m
(H) × 10 m (L) × 4 m (W)
Original location: Bagneux, France (relocated 2014)
THE INSTALLATION
The collage — titled The Initial Segment — was relocated from France to Budapest in 2014 with the support of the Ministry of Human Capacities and the National Cultural Fund of Hungary, on the recommendation of art historian Dr. László Beke. Following its restoration, a full-scale reconstruction of the original artist-run space was presented in 2016 at Műcsarnok – Kunsthalle Budapest, later that year at Art Market Budapest, and in 2017 at the REÖK Regional Art Centre in Szeged.
Musée X-Point-Zéro, installation. Click on the image above to start the virtual tour. Find the exit to venture beyond the installation and discover a hidden surprise. 3D visualisation by Vision Graphics, Budapest.
IN PUBLIC
+ MŰCSARNOK – KUNSTHALLE BUDAPEST, 27 JULY – 11 SEPTEMBER 2016
+ ART MARKET BUDAPEST 2016, 13–16 OCTOBER 2016
+ REGIONAL ART CENTRE, SZEGED, HUNGARY, 31 MARCH – 30 APRIL 2017
INTERVIEWS & CRITICAL ESSAYS
+ VIDEO: Art historian Dr. László Beke introduces the project. TAT Gallery, 2011 [English subtitles]
+ VIDEO: Series of Interviews with Visitors of the Musée X-Point-Zéro in Bagneux, France [English subtitles]
+ Palimpsest and Montage by László Beke, Új Művészet, August 2016, [English translation]
+ Beke László: Palimpszeszt és montázs. Új Művészet, 2016. Augusztus, [Hungarian original]
+ Subjective Encyclopaedism by Róbert Nátyi, Tiszatáj Online, April 2017, [English translation]
+ Nátyi Róbert: Szubjektív enciklopédizmus. Tiszatáj Online, 2017. Április, [Hungarian original]
The Biggest Map of Human Endeavour — The Initial Segment, 1981–1996, Excerpted Segments, limited edition prints, project visualisation.
The Biggest Map of Human Endeavour — The Initial Segment, 1981–1996, The original artwork (left). The reverse side (right), limited edition Diasec-mounted Giclée print on aluminium composite panel, conceptual project visualisation.
The Biggest Map of Human Endeavour — The Initial Segment, 1981–1996, outdoor installation, front & back views, conceptual 3D visualisation
The Biggest Map of Human Endeavour — The Initial Segment, 1981–1996, The reverse of the artwork (details)
THE WAY FORWARD
Musée X-Point-Zéro’s Initial Segment is the first realised part — the seed work — of a long-term art programme, The Biggest Map of Human Endeavour. Conceived as inherently ongoing, the frieze is planned to grow further through international collaborations, welcoming new segments that give form to the cultural heritage and histories of peoples and nations around the world. These additions will incorporate diverse artistic, theoretical, and research approaches, as well as advanced media technologies, engage with different geographical and temporal contexts, and evolve into a hybrid, futuristic, architectural structure — preserving the imprint of our present age, reacting to its transformations, and serving as a beacon for future generations.
The Biggest Map of Human Endeavour — The Next Segments, conceptual 3D visualisation by Vision Graphics, Budapest
PROJECT 2/4:
FUSIONPAINTING — FUSION‘ISM’ > Art is a game between all people of all periods. — Marcel Duchamp + ... art, after all, derives from art. — Lucian Freud + To create only the very best from the very best. — Wilhelm Maybach
Twins, 2021, giclée on canvas, 70 × 100 cm
fusion painting: Branching from montage theory, collage techniques, and appropriation art, fusion painting is a synthesising approach and picture-making practice, in which pictures are constructed solely from appropriated elements and visual units of selected artworks. Pictorial samples taken from all periods of art history and a wide range of cultures are assembled, manipulated, remixed and fused together using software-based hybrid digital techniques to create entirely new, original works of art. Fusion painting also develops a visual language grounded in the specific artistic conventions of digital imaging technology (Huang et al., 2026), its identity resting on the distinctive capacities of graphics software and graphic programming tools (Huang et al., 2026).
Five Standing Figures, 2020, giclée, 83.5 × 180 cm
SELECTED DIGITAL WORKS:
+ MY FAVOURITE LANDSCAPES.PDF – 2024
+ LARGE VIEW – GRAND FORMAT.PDF – 2022
+ THE LOVING CUP SERIES.PDF – 2022
+ KALEIDOSCOPIC FUSION.PDF – 2021
VOICES ON FUSION PAINTING:
+ Kristóf Ázbej’s Digital Fusion Painting: Permeation and Transparency, Képírás Folyóirat, 2020, [English translation]
+ Ázbej Kristóf digitális fúziófestészetéről, Képírás Folyóirat, 2020, [Hungarian original]
+ Tea Time, Noprint Magazin, 2016 — [Hungarian original] — [English translation]
+ Paraphrase, Képírás Internetes Folyóirat, 2025, [Artwork Gallery]
+ József Szurcsik: Kristóf Ázbej’s Fusion Painting, opening speech, 2025, [English translation]
+ Szurcsik József: Ázbej Kristóf Fúziófestészete, megnyitóbeszéd, 2025, [Hungarian original]
GICLÉE PRINTING AT PIGMENTA ART PRINT LAB, BUDAPEST, 2020
fusionism: The concept of fusionism in art emerged from the first experiments with digital fusion painting techniques. In the first version of the Fusionist Manifesto – The Winning Strategy, written in 2011, fusion art is introduced as a brand new and eclectic tendency in fine art that will open new territories, create new dynamics, generate new aesthetics and initiate new theoretical perspectives in art. Fusionism is announced as a new ‘ism’, fundamentally synergetic and relational, ‘experimenting with new types of collaborative methods and contexts in creative processes’.
fusionist manifesto: ‘No evolutionary future awaits man except in association with all other men. The egocentric ideal of a future reserved for those who have managed to attain egoistically the extremity of everyone for himself is false and against nature. No element could move and grow except with and by all the others with itself.
Also false and against nature is the racial ideal of one branch draining off for itself alone all the sap of the tree and rising over the death of other branches. To reach the sun nothing less is required than the combined growth of the entire foliage.
The outcome of the world, the gates of the future, the entry into the super-human — these are not thrown open to a few of the privileged nor to one chosen people to the exclusion of all others. They will open only to an advance of all together, in a direction in which all together can join and find completion in a spiritual renovation of the earth, a renovation whose physical degree of reality we must now consider and whose outline we must make clearer.’ (Teilhard de Chardin: The Phenomenon of Man (1955), written 1938–40, as cited in The Fusionist Manifesto – The Winning Strategy, 2011)
the triumph of synergy: The fusionist creative principle, like the practice itself, is a hermeneutic process that builds on art history itself. The artist’s gesture begins with a kind of archaeological excavation, which may then be followed by reconstruction, and finally by magic — indeed, by alchemical transformation. Fusion art treats the art-historical heritage as a kind of collective DNA: through digital sampling, this genetic code is broken down, then recombined through a distinctive, artificial gene fusion to create a visual life form that carries the attributes of its sources whilst possessing its own, independent existence. (József Szurcsik, painter, Kossuth and Munkácsy Prizes, opening speech, 2025 — full text)
fusion power: Fusion power is power generated by nuclear fusion processes, in which light atomic nuclei fuse together to form a single heavier nucleus, releasing an immense amount of energy. Fusion is one of nature’s most spectacular achievements — the fundamental energy source of the Universe and the very process that powers the stars. Billions and billions of fusion furnaces are flaring across the cosmos, creating light and energy. What we see as light and feel as warmth is the direct result of a fusion reaction. In the core of the Sun, at temperatures of 10–15 million Kelvin, hydrogen is converted to helium by fusion, providing enough energy to keep the Sun burning and to sustain life on our planet.
Scientists and engineers are working to reproduce fusion on a smaller scale. A prototype of a working compact nuclear fusion reactor could be ready by the mid-2030s.
the key to the future: Fusion power promises to be the ultimate energy source for the future. By the last quarter of the 21st century our world will enter the Age of Fusion — an age when mankind covers a significant part of its energy needs with an inexhaustible, environmentally benign, and universally available resource. (extracts from The Fusionist Manifesto – The Winning Strategy, 2011)
FACES SERIES, BUDAÖRS FESZTIVÁL, EXHIBITION VIEW, 2014, GICLÉE PRINTS ON CANVAS. 100 × 100 CM
PROJECT 3/4:
MESSAGE TO EARTH — THE CATUKAL CODE AND THE HARI SELDON LABYRINTH > An Epic Artwork Project Based on a Science Fiction Theme
+ THE CATUKAL CODE — Excerpt from the beginning of the Message to Earth script, by Kristóf Ázbej
THE CATUKAL CODE – 2013 SERIES, LIMITED EDITION DIASEC-MOUNTED GICLÉE PRINT ON ALUMINIUM COMPOSITE PANEL
ALIEN MONOLITHS BASED ON THE CATUKAL CODE DESIGNS, 2002, PROJECT VISUALISATION
EXHIBITION AND PROJECT DISPLAY AT MŰCSARNOK – KUNSTHALLE BUDAPEST (ÁZBEJ & ÁZBEJ | ALGIERS–BUDAPEST–PARIS | 2016)
The Message to Earth programme includes the construction of a pyramid-sized world monument, which would also provide a permanent home for the sub-units realised within the framework of The Biggest Map of Human Endeavour initiative (project 1/4). The Hari Seldon Labyrinth — this futuristic architectural ensemble evoking mythical, ancient megalithic cultures — would bring to life within its interior spaces the history of our planet: humanity’s knowledge repository, expanding into the infinity of time as a living, future-shaping force — a lighthouse for future generations.
STILLS FROM THE CONCEPTUAL 3D PROJECT VISUALISATION OF THE HARI SELDON LABYRINTH, 2021, BY VISION GRAPHICS, BUDAPEST
PROJECT 4/4:
THE FUSION WORKS FACTORY AND THE WE THINK & ART POINT > An open space built around the history and current practice of Kristóf Ázbej’s major projects; a lively intellectual workshop; a theatricalised studio; an experimental art factory and creative base where the work continues to evolve — and, in time, an international centre of cultural knowledge and influence, as well as a cult gathering and hospitality venue.
© Kristóf Ázbej, 2010–2026. All Rights Reserved