Botond Gagyi

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Botond Gagyi is a Transylvanian painter whose practice interrogates the shifting boundaries between representation and abstraction through a sustained engagement with the human figure. Educated at the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, where he obtained both a BA and an MA in Painting and where he is currently pursuing doctoral research, Gagyi belongs to a generation of artists redefining figurative painting within post-transition Romania. His works have been presented in numerous solo and collective exhibitions across Europe, including the National Gallery Prague within the framework of the StartPoint Prize for European Art Graduates, as well as at institutions such as the Museum of Art Cluj-Napoca, the Palace of Culture Târgu Mureș, and international venues in London, New York, and Molfetta. His pictorial language reflects a rigorous exploration of how identity and perception are mediated through visual experience. Drawing upon art-historical sources, vernacular photography, and the micro-narratives of everyday life, Gagyi reconstructs found imagery into layered compositions that expose the fragility and volatility of human presence. The figures in his canvases appear suspended between emergence and disappearance, their dissolution into painterly matter evoking a subtle sense of estrangement. Through his material process of overpainting, scraping and re-layering, Gagyi generates a pictorial space in which the figurative and the abstract coexist in a continuous state of negotiation.