The Subtle Body, 2018

Graphite drawing with glitch-based digital manipulation, archival pigment print on paper – 1058 × 846 mm

Bónyai Barbara’s The Subtle Body / A szubtilis test is a digital reinterpretation of a hand-drawn graphite portrait in which the glitch aesthetic emerges not merely as a formal distortion but as a conceptual-ontological gesture. The work presents an intimate portrait of the artist’s beloved and spiritual companion in a state of meditative elevation. Rather than capturing a likeness, the image offers an inner vision – a visual metaphor for the subtle body of the self.

The notion of the “subtle body” originates in Eastern metaphysics, particularly in tantric and yogic traditions, where it denotes an energetic and emotional imprint that exists in parallel with the physical body, acting as the vessel of consciousness and spirit. Bónyai fuses the expressive sensitivity of traditional graphite drawing with the digital language of glitch, as if attempting to trace this invisible stratum through the layered structure of the image.

Here, glitch – the digital error – becomes a visual language of transcendence. The upward “vaporizing” distortions and downward “dripping” glitches evoke the inner flux that occurs along the delicate threshold between body and spirit. In this context, glitches are not malfunctions but thresholds – gateways into a different quality of being. Just as glitch art in general repurposes system errors to uncover new layers of meaning, in this work distortion itself becomes a spiritual signifier.

The soft brownish tones and the analogue origin of the drawing suggest a timeless stillness, which the digital intervention transforms into an almost auratic presence. The portrait captures not only a person, but the energetic field that surrounds him: a floating state of contemplation, melancholy, and inwardness. To the viewer, the image functions as a digital icon – not in the religious sense, but as a trace of inner presence manifested through visual noise and layered disruption.

Bónyai’s work is thus at once deeply personal and conceptually abstract: a portrait of love and a visual meditation, a technological gesture and a spiritual imprint. It captures a fleeting, rare quality often obscured in the contemporary flood of digital imagery – the fineness of being.