Erik Mátrai: AIR

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.