“The Procreation of Light”, Botond Gagyi’s solo exhibition recently opened at Biju Gallery, explores the transformative nature of light, offering an immersive journey through form, perception and meaning.

“According to legend, when Diogenes saw a child drinking from a spring using only his clasped hands, he immediately threw away his drinking bowl. Seeing this natural, unmediated gesture, he got rid of his last possession to which he could have clung. The body itself is already a tool, a property and a burden enough for man. In fact, deep down in our being, we aspire to something quite different, not to any possession. To something intangible, not rooted in this world, not subject to the inexorable laws of the material world, but neither untouchable nor too beyond. To something that we can define by countless names, that we can sense indirectly, but that we can only experience in the reality of our Self, in the realm beyond our senses, feelings and minds. Something that emanates from us and pours into us in an amplified form. We yearn for something which always lies in the depths of our being. Our id, our original identity, our real Self, with which we seek to merge and reintegrate our fictitious and perishing self.

According to the Hermetic doctrines, there is only one reality, and this is Consciousness itself, the spiritual Light, which takes various forms in our life and performs certain operations and transmutations. Our task is to invoke, to consecrate this Light, to realize this Consciousness. This Reality cannot be taught; it is inexplicable and beyond concepts, but we must somehow realize it within ourselves. Botond Gagyi, with his special pictorial language, attempts a visual evocation of this operation. […]
Botond reveals a hermetic operation. There are two kinds of procreation of light: creative transfiguration, sacrificial offering, and, at the same time, the receipt of a sublime gift. In the palms of a kuros, the eternal male principle is like that of a contemporary youth. Thanks to his enchanting gaze and his welding attention, a hypertrophied brain comes to life from ordinary clay. This plasma, shining in the ocean of wakefulness, may be the very light of the Logos. On the right wing, a koré, a principle of virginal femininity, offers its immense translucent heart, igniting it with the fire of devotion. Around the heart-light source, all the air becomes live coal. The very ember of love glows pulsating. From dense clay and translucent crystals, man can create living fires.

[…] These canvases are fiery visual signs of awakening consciousness. How can I reach the indefinable beyond the outcrop, a rebirth, this time into spiritual light? How can I unlock this Light within me? According to Botond’s pictorial testimony – through the vision and projection of creative power due to the Logos and through the Light of the Heart, through the transformative path of love. Waiting for the intrusion of the numinous, through supernatural self-creation and self-giving, man can purify himself in ‘gold-light’. There is a way out of the bony lair of our illusions so that we can plunge into Reality, into the blue infinity of consciousness devoid of dreams and terrestrial volume – through alchemical transmutation. For this, we must first descend into the rocky window of our brain shell and seek the sliver of light of our waking state, which can only be glimpsed after shedding the deceptive skin of our reptilian ego. This approach implies a cataclysmic change, a peeling of the scenery, and a relinquishment of imaginary forms and projections. We glimpse reality through the clear blue of a triangular ray of Consciousness.” (Fragment from the curatorial text)
Gèza Dabòczi, curator

The exhibition can be visited until March 30, 2025. Free entrance.