Exalted Space I-III, 2018

Digital image creation based on graphite drawing series – 297 x 210 mm

Bónyai Barbara’s three-part series stands as a quiet manifesto of meditative attention. Exalted Space explores the possibility of transcendent experience embedded within everyday phenomena, interpreting the interaction of light and space not merely as visual events but as philosophical and spiritual occurrences.

The series originates from graphite studies depicting three points within a 200-year-old press house – the artist’s current living space – capturing the fragmented presence of sunlight filtering through the otherwise dark interior. These traditionally rendered drawings evolve digitally into compositions animated by liquid, water-like vortices. These dynamic elements infuse classical spatial structure with gestures of abstraction and flow, functioning as metaphors for inner movement. The cool bluish-grey tones evoke a tranquil, contemplative state, while the pale yellow-white beams of light function not only as spatial anchors, but as signifiers of a spiritual presence.

The work does not illustrate or narrate; it calls for presence. It invites a kind of contemplation that reveals the sacred within the ordinary. Emerging from the observation of natural light within domestic architecture, this project becomes not just a private mapping of space, but a visual record of inner practice – the cultivation of attention, the aesthetics of mindful presence.

As part of the Popicon cycle, the series continues Bónyai’s aesthetic strategy of confronting popular visual culture with philosophical and metaphysical depth. Through the deliberate fusion of classical and digital media, the artist forges a distinctive visual language in which timelessness and the present moment, reality and illusion, the everyday and the sacred do not negate but rather amplify one another.