At her first solo exhibition at acb, Rita Süveges (1986) debuts with her new series of velvet paintings and a monumental steel drawing connected to this cycle. In addition to exploring retrofuturism - vision of the future from the past - the starting point of her velvet works is light itself. On the nearly monochromatic surfaces of her paintings, Süveges composes gradually unfolding images from the interplay of light and shadow, brightness and darkness. The exhibition’s title refers to the fact that sunlight - the primary force shaping life on Earth - takes approximately eight minutes to reach our planet through space, which span of time hasn’t changed in our solar system for millions of years. Süveges’s immersive painting draws viewers in with low-intensity contrasts of light and color. Her works typically cannot be fully perceived at only a glance; viewers must linger in front of the paintings, allowing their eyes to adjust to the visuality, just as they would to darkness at night. A further special feature of Süveges’s visuality is the homogeneity of her motifs, painted in varying shades of one color.

Just as essential as light, space, evoked through color and material quality, is the other foundation of the paintings of Süveges. Like her 2023 Infrastructure series, which won the Esterházy Audience Award, her current works also engage with speculative spaces. Imaginary spacecraft and space stations are now accompanied by invented landscapes, forests, and jungles, themselves the products of human scientific imagination. In her new paintings, Süveges depicts the flora of millions of years ago, from which the Earth’s carbon reserves were accumulated over a very long period of time.

In recent years, her painting has also responded to a new cultural phenomenon: the return of retro futuristic visions, which have emerged from the lack of political and societal imagination of the present. The escapist longing of humanity to conquer space has resurfaced in the face of the threatening ecological and climate crisis on Planet Earth.

Through her works, Süveges also raises further and numerous open-ended questions: Are the plants and landscapes of the paintings part of the living or non-living realm? Where do we draw the line between the natural and the artificial? If we open the door of our spacecraft - an artificially created living space - what awaits us on the other side? Carboniferous-era CGI jungles or desertified landscapes? Will our habitats become miniaturized or magnified in this new constellation? What new existential experiences arise when we, at least in our imagination leave behind Earth’s familiar framework, that natural environment which has served both as our home and our pantry?