The Distance of Years, 2024

Site-specific mural relief, mixed media, conceptual installation, time-based documentation, digital collage, felt-tip pen, plaster, lime – 400 × 400 × 15 mm

Bónyai Barbara’s The Distance of Years is a highly complex, multidimensional work that expands from an intimate, private space into a contemplation of time on a cosmic scale. Its site-specific nature derives not only from its integration into the wall of a private residence but also from its conceptual rootedness in real spatial and temporal coordinates: the juxtaposition of sunlight projections captured on the wall in 2001 and again in 2024.

At the core of the work lies a profound and sensuous inquiry into the passage of time. The slight displacement of the light projection – caused by the subtle axial shift of the Earth – makes palpable both planetary movement and the personal experience of temporality. This duality between the personal and the universal, the ephemeral and the enduring, the concealed and the documented, defines the philosophical tension and unity at the heart of the piece.

Bónyai sealed the final relief with white lime, in a gesture that is simultaneously one of concealment and preservation, of disappearance and endurance. This act transforms the work into a metaphor for the archive and memory itself – where traces of time are both hidden and revealed. The transient phenomenon of sunlight is thus translated into a sculptural form, embodying the continuity of change.

In the 2024 photographic documentation, the sunlight and window-frame shadows appear less distinct than in the original 2001 images. Over the intervening decades, vegetation growing in front of the window has diffused and partially obscured the light. This natural “interference” introduces a new layer to the work: light becomes not only a marker of time but also a carrier of environmental and spatial transformation. The fragility and unpredictability of light evoke the fading of memory and the inevitable reshaping of both private space and cosmic narrative.

As the installation remains inaccessible – permanently embedded within a private home – its inaccessibility paradoxically reinforces the work’s discursive openness. The primary mode of reception becomes its documentation (photographs, digital collages, textual description), which extends the materiality of the work into the digital realm, where it finds renewed visibility and life.

This time-based piece resonates strongly with the artist’s ongoing Transmutation Cycle (2023–2025), a period marked by a shift away from decorative popular aesthetics toward a more conceptual, stylized, abstract, and often grotesque visual language. Within this context, The Distance of Years articulates key themes of the cycle: the dissolution of reality and identity, the complexity of spatial and temporal perception in the digital age, and the dynamic interplay of memory, documentation, and erasure.

The three-part digital collage series created from the installation’s photographic documentation – infused with subtle glitch aesthetics – extends and abstracts the core concerns of the work. These images transpose the temporal imprint of the physical world into the fragmented, noisy, and postmodern visual lexicon of the digital domain.

Ultimately, The Distance of Years presents a sacred interplay of light, time, and space – an intimate yet universal meditation that transforms private experience into shared philosophical and emotional reflection. It raises poignant questions about preservation, disappearance, and transformation within the unstable terrain of 21st-century digital reality.