Working Method
I seek material form for states of perception that are not originally visual.
I am interested in how everything that is not directly visible might acquire physical presence: memory, absence, inner tension, connection, or the experience of an order beyond ourselves. Not through explanation, but through matter, light, and perception. This is where every work begins.
To me, visual experience is never passive. Just as language shapes thought, images shape perception. Symbols, colours, forms and materials do not merely carry meaning; they act upon those who encounter them. For this reason, an image is never innocent. It does not simply reflect reality; it participates in its formation.
A painting begins to interest me when it functions as more than an image: when it becomes a perceptual situation. It succeeds when it does not resolve meaning but creates a state in which the visible and the invisible briefly intersect.
My paintings often appear to depict “something.” That recognisability, however, is a point of entry rather than an end in itself. I am not interested in recording appearances, but in the uncertain moment when the viewer can no longer say with confidence where they are, what they are seeing, or what they should relate it to. I want the work to attract and unsettle at the same time, resisting the comfort of immediate interpretation.
The painted surface functions as an information-bearing field: a deliberately composed system of layers, fractures, reliefs, gestures, glossy and matte passages, material thicknesses and shadows. Together these elements generate geological, earth-like depths and elevations that alter the way the work is perceived under changing light conditions and from different viewing distances and angles.
The creative process is a sequence of decisions. The painterly language of a work takes shape through these decisions. My range of means continues to expand: every new material opens up further possibilities. Alongside paint, I use many other materials; for me, they do not take the work outside painting, but expand its language.
The way I touch the surface is itself part of this sequence of decisions. I observe how it is shaped by my inner and outer experiences and by my temperament. I enjoy this freedom. Surfaces, gestures and uses of material may vary within a single painting and from one work to another.
This freedom has an inner order. A plan and a conscious artistic intention hold the process together; ultimately, they determine what may remain on the surface. Gesture, thick paint, relief, colour and material are all tools and raw material. Nothing remains on the surface merely because it is visually striking. I trust a surface only when its physical structure and the thought behind it become inseparable.
I continue to explore how far a painting’s material, sensory and conceptual presence can be condensed while it still remains, by definition, a painting.
Biography
Judit B. Bodo is a Hungarian visual artist whose practice centres on painting, material experimentation and the construction of imagined and psychological space. She completed a five-year degree in Painting at the University of Arts in Bucharest in 1999, following earlier studies in scenography. After graduating, she worked as a Teaching Assistant in the Painting Department at Luceafarul University of Fine Arts in Bucharest, while also organising and leading artist camps in Transylvania. She later lived and worked in different parts of Europe, including extended periods in Italy and Germany.
For much of the following two decades, her professional work extended into other visual, spatial and material fields, including graphic design, interior design, scenography and film prop design. Alongside these activities, she continued to paint and developed an increasing interest in the physical behaviour of materials, surfaces and pigments. More recently, this has expanded into research and experimentation with plant-based pigments, fibres and other natural materials.
These experiences now converge in her artistic practice. Material processes contribute directly to the heterogeneous surfaces of her paintings; her background in scenography and spatial design reappears in screens, panels and object-like works; while drawing and graphic thinking remain present in the structural organisation of her images. Rather than treating material simply as a carrier of an image, her current work increasingly investigates how material, surface, process and spatial structure participate in the formation of the image itself.