7 – 30. June 2022
Staring at the sky filled with its clear, extensive, deep colour – what makes this experience so unique?
Why is it happen that the homogeneous, continuous, unbroken shade of colour on the surface – that is both empty and yet infinitely dense – draw one’s attention by the fact that during the minutes spent with observation, it decomposes more and more into its fragments, revealing more and more precisely its quiet, barely noticeable aspects?
In the multitude of flourishing visual stimuli reaching our minds, silence, the momentary vacuum creates a kind of experience of observation that can focus on both its own processes and its subject without getting lost in the details above and below it. Barbara Szlavik's paintings are composed of concreteness; a kind of silence that does not exist or barely exists for modern man. The extremely reduced visuality opens the door to in-depth attention and expands the range of possibilities of interpretation, therefore the tense attention resulting from the minimum of stimuli involuntarily extends to the details that can only really prevail in a silenced context.
The works on display exist within the expanse of this quiet, stripped-down place. These paintings expand further than their stretcher ends. They can only be interpreted with sensitivity.
Szlavik's paintings make the audience turn inward, to calm their mind. The boundaries of painting must be sought within ourselves, and it is not enough to perceive the barely perceptible only in itself.
Agnes Martin Mark Rothko-ról: „elérte a nullát, így semmi sem állhat az igazság útjába”.
Curator: ÁKOS BÁNKI
Opening Speech: ISTVÁN LOSONCZY