STUDY OF BEING | Ádám Jelen

Ádám Jelen’s exhibition Study of Being explores the transitional state between presence and absence through the physical and material traces of everyday existence. Abandoned objects, implied narratives, and fading images evoke moments suspended after something has passed, but before a new form has solidified. Study of Being is an ontological enquiry—a visual contemplation on how the past lingers in the present through faint, veiled traces that remain visible. Jelen does not offer clear-cut answers; instead, his images unfold as unresolved questions.

The series materialises as small-scale archival pigment prints on etching paper. Deep tones and textured, matt surfaces are counterbalanced by the soft shimmer permeating the entire body of work. While some images capture the clarity of material reality, others subtly dissolve its sharp contours. A door handle wrapped in foil, a cigarette butt left on the ledge of a car window, a key left in a lock or a ladder descending into water mark liminal spaces that hint at the events of the recent past and the plasticity of the near future. The interplay between isolation and implication, obscurity and sharpness, intimacy and distance simultaneously introduces lyricism and uncertainty into the photographs. Rooted in screenwriting and fashion photography, Jelen’s practice has also been shaped by Wolfgang Tillmans’s abstract use of light and Peter Lindbergh’s monochrome contrasts.

By implying spatial and temporal liminality, Jelen translates the often fragile, tense or painful threshold states of personal and social change. By capturing physical traces, he interprets immaterial emotions. His pensive works invite decelerated attention guided by empathy. Study of Being thus preserves the quiet, fleeting moments suspended within the emotional void of transition.

Hanna Claris, art historian, 2026.