The new exhibition at Bak Imre Space, Aurewave, is situated at the boundary between space, light, and the sensory experience of matter. The joint installation by Erik Mátrai and Alma Vetlényi is based on slowing down perception and restructuring attention. The work examines the dialectic of presence, movement, and silence, that is, how space becomes not only a receptacle but also a lived experience.
Erik Mátrai’s experiments with light and space transform the meditative foundations of painting into an installation form: in his works, light is not a metaphor but a material that functions as an everyday representation of transcendence. In dialogue with this, Alma Vetlényi uses textiles as a sensitive, reactive surface where the rhythm of material and movement form a common language. Their collaboration is not illustrative but structural, an integral part of the creative process in which authorship is shared and dialogue generates the form itself.
The installation centers on an elliptical piece of fabric that is held in a continuous, barely perceptible motion by a structure. The duality of the metallic construction and the soft material evokes both the mechanical and organic worlds. The light does not simply illuminate the surface of the ellipse, but draws, models, and distorts it: projection and reflection constantly rearrange the form, so that the ellipse is not a static composition, but an optical event that changes with the viewer’s movement. The interplay of light, silence, and material creates a transitional space in which the boundaries between movement and stillness, body and space, form and dissolution become blurred.
Aurewave is not just an installation, but a phenomenological spatial experiment: a contemplative environment where perception—as a material and spiritual experience—reshapes space. Art here is not representation but presence; not spectacle but state. The shared structure of softness, light, and silence calls for attention rather than understanding, for experience rather than description.