Who the artist is, and how
this practice developed.
Artist Background
Sándor Polgári is a contemporary painter whose practice developed from an earlier engagement with photography and gradually grew into an independent body of painting.
He began working with photography in 2004, creating black-and-white photographs of landscapes, buildings and overlooked places. This period shaped a sustained attention to atmosphere, structure, light and visual detail that continues to inform his painting.
He began painting in 2022, at the age of forty-seven. Working without formal training in painting, he developed his practice through continuous work and experimentation, gradually establishing a personal approach to image, material and surface.
His paintings are made primarily with acrylic and other water-based materials on reclaimed or reused fibreboard. Reused and salvaged wood also forms part of the material practice, particularly in the construction and reuse of frames.
Yoga and the Practice of Attention
For eighteen years, Sándor Polgári has practised traditional Himalayan yoga. The practice has gradually become part of the way he approaches painting — particularly in his understanding of attention, perception and presence.
Rather than treating painting as the execution of a predetermined image, he approaches it as a sustained act of attention, allowing the image to develop through the encounter between perception, intuition, hand and material. This way of working is closely connected to the discipline of one-pointed attention cultivated through his yoga practice.
Development of the Practice
The development of Sándor Polgári’s practice can be traced through several connected stages — from an earlier engagement with photography to the beginning of painting in 2022, and through a growing body of paintings, artist books and exhibition projects. The timeline below records the principal dates and milestones of this development.
Exhibitions
Within Me
The interactive exhibition titled 'Within Me' invites visitors into a personal encounter between visual experience and inner emotion through paintings brought to life via QR codes.
Between Earth and Sky
The exhibition titled Between Earth and Sky invites visitors on a quiet inner journey, where the paintings become a personal space of encounter between lived memories and aspirations for the future.
Nineteen
The exhibition titled NINETEEN intertwines the distilled visual signs of nineteen Hungarian landscapes with accompanying literary excerpts, tracing a parallel map of the Hungarian landscape and cultural memory.
Humanspace
A painting project exploring human presence, fleeting moments, and the personal meanings that emerge through each viewer’s encounter with the image.
Publications
Current Practice
The practice continues to develop through new paintings, exhibition projects and artist books. Current projects and the ideas behind the work are presented in the Exhibition Projects and Artist Statement.