EXHIBITIONS | November 25, 2024
Suspending Time and Space:
A Personal Encounter with Márta Kucsora’s Liminal Spaces
By Laura Acosta
Stepping into Liminal Spaces at Kahan Art Space Buda is like entering a realm where time and matter suspend their usual course. The sheer scale of Márta Kucsora’s monumental works invites an immediate, visceral reaction. The paintings appear to breathe with their surroundings, drawing you into their turbulent energy. It is not just an encounter with art but with a force that feels simultaneously natural and otherworldly, as if standing before an unstoppable tide or a storm frozen mid-motion.
This personal perception sets the tone for the experience: Kucsora’s work does not seek to merely impress but to envelop, to challenge the viewer to feel the work as much as see it. Through this lens, Liminal Spaces becomes not an academic exploration but a human one—an encounter with the artist’s relentless pursuit of scale, process, and the raw power of material transformation.
Immersive installation view of Márta Kucsora’s Liminal Spaces, showcasing the artist’s powerful engagement with scale and materiality.
A Visual Ecosystem in Evolution
Kucsora proposes a biocentric experience, where the creative process mirrors the dynamics of an evolving ecosystem. Her technique of pouring and manipulating paint resembles the unpredictable movements of a living system, where each intervention by the artist becomes an act of negotiation with the material’s physical properties. Thus, Kucsora is not merely a creator but a facilitator of processes that transcend human control, embracing contingency and chaos as aesthetic principles.
In Beautiful Error, the video work that serves as the conceptual core of the exhibition, Kucsora documents the flow of paint in real-time. This video is projected on a scale that envelops the viewer, inviting total immersion in the texture and movement of the material. Here, paint sheds its physical structure and becomes pure visual energy. Through this transition to a digital medium, the work acquires an expansive temporality, where each second captures the transformation of pigment and light into an ephemeral, ever-changing landscape.
Close-up of Márta Kucsora’s dynamic painting technique, capturing the raw energy of fluid forms and layered textures in Liminal Spaces.
Detail of Kucsora’s work in Liminal Spaces, highlighting the intricate interplay of pigment and materiality.
Architecture and the Body: A Spatial Dialectic
The architectural space plays a fundamental role in the experience of Liminal Spaces. Housed in a modernist industrial building, Kahan Art Space Buda is more than a container; it becomes a dialogue partner for the works. The white walls and high ceilings act as an additional canvas, amplifying the interaction between the visitors’ bodies, the space, and the paintings. Kucsora’s compositions expand beyond the frame, engaging with architectural lines and voids, creating a rhythm that guides the viewer through a fluid, organic journey.
This spatial dimension turns the experience into a performative act, where the viewer’s body activates and completes the work. The relationship between the visitor and the pieces is intrinsically physical; as they move around the paintings, viewers become part of a process that reflects the flow and energy Kucsora channels into her creation. Thus, Liminal Spaces is as much an art exhibition as it is a choreography of movements, a total artwork in which each element – space, work, and observer – interacts in a network of shared meanings.
Interior of Kahan Art Space Buda, transformed by Márta Kucsora’s Liminal Spaces, where monumental art meets modernist design.
Intersections of Influence and Innovation
Ultimately, Liminal Spaces offers a reflection on the nature of time and perception in art. Kucsora invites the viewer to experience an extended temporality, where each moment of observation reveals new layers of visual and emotional complexity. The works suggest a world in constant transformation, where time manifests not only as an external factor but as an intrinsic component of the aesthetic experience. Painting becomes a field of energy, a temporal flow that transcends mere representation and becomes a meditation on the very essence of change and permanence.
Viola Lukács’ curatorial approach emphasizes this dialogue between time and space, creating a narrative where abstraction becomes a tool to explore the limits of human perception. By transcending the traditional confines of painting, Kucsora redefines the act of seeing and being seen, transforming observation into an experience of self-discovery. In Liminal Spaces, the viewer is not a passive observer but an active participant in an expanding universe, where art reflects humanity’s infinite capacity to imagine and reimagine the world.
Márta Kucsora and curator Viola Lukács in Liminal Spaces, a collaborative exploration of monumental painting and dynamic spatial interaction.
In Liminal Spaces, Márta Kucsora offers more than an expansion of painting’s physical boundaries; she creates a transformative platform where art and space merge in profound dialogue. Her work does not simply inhabit the gallery—it redefines it, turning it into a meeting point between materiality and perception. Through this exhibition, Kucsora presents a vision of painting that feels both timeless and forward-looking, a testament to art’s capacity to evolve without losing its core essence.
Rather than concluding, Liminal Spaces opens an invitation to explore painting as an ongoing act of discovery, where each viewer becomes both witness to and participant in a process of perpetual evolution. With this show, Kucsora reasserts her role as a pioneering voice in contemporary abstract painting, urging us to rethink our relationship with art and the spaces we inhabit, and leaving us with questions and reflections that resonate long after we leave the gallery.
Exhibition Details
Liminal Spaces
20 September – 19 December 2024
By appointment: +36 30 380 4905 | nemeth@evakahanfoundation.org
Kahan Art Space Buda | 1116 Budapest, Gyapot utca 4
Photography Credits: Orsi Egressy and Reka Hegyhati
Márta Kucsora
Laura Acosta, Curator and Creative Director at Arttyco, combines her background in architecture, interior design, and cultural management to create accessible and engaging contemporary art experiences. Her multidisciplinary approach emphasizes spatial awareness and deep audience connection.