BARABÁS ZSÓFI: A LÉLEGZŐ ÉG ALATT

The exhibition *Under the Breathing Sky* simultaneously reveals the essence of Barabás’s painting and its spatial extension. The works explore the relationships between color, form, line, and texture through forms that approach and collide, merge and separate, float and intertwine. The question of connection and interrelationships is not merely formal but serves as the organizing principle permeating the entire exhibition.

At first glance, Barabás’s painting creates an organic, protective environment: his bold colors, sinuous lines, and impasto layers give rise to surfaces that are in motion and seem to breathe. The interpretation of the forms floating within these abstract color fields is fluid: they can be read both as cell-like structures and as landscapes viewed from a bird’s-eye perspective. River-like veins and pond-like forms emerge, ultimately coalescing into a system, a breathing whole.

In the eponymous painting (*Under the Breathing Sky*, 2026), the artist’s earlier black-and-white, sketch-like gestures—characteristic of the late 2000s—make a return. The thick black brushstrokes stretching across the pristine white surface are bound together by a furrowed, deep-blue ring; irregular, horseshoe-like shapes settle upon the amoeba-like color formations. These are connected by tentacle-like links, as if the image were organized according to its own internal logic.

In the exhibition, the architecturally layered forms emerge from the pictorial surface, transcending the boundaries of painting to enter physical space. Arranged like sculptures, they form a labyrinthine forest, freed from the constraints of the rectangular picture format. Black-and-white linear motifs creep into the sculptures’ interior openings, where time and space are thus layered. Elsewhere, the dense, multicolored surfaces applied with a broad brush evoke the CoBrA group, reminiscent of Karel Appel’s striking color palette and thick impasto, while contemporary parallels also emerge: both Carol Bove’s spatial thinking and Julie Mehretu’s graphic complexity influence Barabás.

The exhibition’s title is taken from a line of poetry by Krisztina Tóth: it evokes layering, rhythm, and movement beneath an all-encompassing sky. A sense of fresh air, serenity, and forward-looking openness permeates the space, where breathing appears as a metaphor for renewal and regeneration—both at the cellular level and on a cosmic scale. Zsófi Barabás’s paintings and sculptures are organized in a stream-of-consciousness manner: the artist captures the unfiltered flow of thoughts, interweaving inner monologues, sensory impressions, and memories in real time. All of this coalesces into a nonlinear yet deeply personal narrative that offers a way to find one’s bearings in the labyrinths of life.

This approach also engages the viewer: the works encourage us to develop our own paths of interpretation and to assimilate Barabás’s visual language into our inner monologue. They convey a cheerful perspective nourished by these connections and remind us that we are all part of the same infinite space. Through the system of relationships that emerges among the distinct forms, Zsófi Barabás creates a unity that coalesces like a living organism—becoming a breathing, all-encompassing presence. Her organic abstraction ultimately unfolds like a vast sky, carrying the promise of fresh air.