Erik Mátrai: AIR
This time the focus of Erik Mátrai's exhibition AIR is on his latest paintings.
Schedule
The pieces of the series of large abstract canvases are most akin to the homogeneous surface formations of "color field" painting, but instead of direct painting gestures, brushstrokes, and scratches, the fields are filled with subtly interlocking, almost ethereal surfaces of color through a special paint-blowing technique. The process, which is based on the artist's own body and breathing, involves the juxtaposition and overlapping of tiny, barely visible paint spots on the surface of the canvas. In other words, the fields of colour on the canvas are not actually created from physically mixed colours, but, in the sense of pointillist colour theory, are born in the viewer's mind from the pure, unmixed optical constellation of tiny dots. The resulting paintings open up vistas of fictitious atmospheric phenomena and transcendental landscapes.
Mátrai's atmospheric paintings and related works on paper explore the sublime aesthetics central to his large-scale light installations, and through them, the contemporary possibilities of the relationship between scientific cognition and sacrality.
acb Gallery
Founded in Budapest in 2003, acb Gallery has consistently grown in the past two decades establishing itself as one of the leading actors in the Hungarian and Eastern European art market. Initially, the gallery’s focus was on Hungarian and international emerging and mid-generation neo-conceptual artists, who became active after the political changes in the former Eastern Bloc in 1990. Since then, the gallery has expanded its focus, and now represents numerous Hungarian neo-avant-garde artists who have left their mark on art history since the 1960s and 1970s, as well as members of the youngest generations beside the already established ones. Since the autumn of 2022, acb runs three exhibition spaces: the main gallery space, acb Attachment, which serves as a project space, and acb Plus, dedicated to large-scale solo and group presentations. acb’s research and publishing department, acb ResearchLab was founded in 2015. This platform within the gallery aims to fill the gaps in the reception and publication of Hungarian neo-avant-garde and post-avant-garde oeuvres by studying bodies of works and art phenomena previously treated as peripheral. The gallery holds significant importance within the global art market, actively promoting its artists nationally as well as internationally and engaging in art fairs, such as the Art Basel in Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach, the Frieze Masters London or the ARCO Madrid.