Purple Exit

Tibor Babos

Cubes Collection

Paradox Constructivism / Constructive Unrealism

2024

60 x 50 cm (23.6 x 19.6 in)

Oil on 3D+ Canvas

Budapest

In Private Collection

In Purple Exit, Tibor Babos constructs a spatial paradox that feels at once architectural and psychological. A red cubic volume hovers against a restrained grey field, its mass both assertive and suspended. At its center, a recessed purple plane appears as an opening—yet the longer one looks, the less certain that opening becomes. Is it a passage inward, a sealed chamber, or a void disguised as depth? The painting does not resolve this question. It stages it.

At first encounter, the composition reads as disciplined and minimal: a single geometric body rendered with calm precision. But this simplicity is deceptive. Multiple planes are visible simultaneously in a way that subtly defies physical logic. The outer red structure suggests solidity and containment, while the inner violet surface absorbs light and destabilizes the illusion of volume. The eye is invited inward and then denied entry. The result is a tension between invitation and obstruction—between the promise of depth and the impossibility of access.

The red planes are built with palpable material density. Their surface is not flat but worked—layered, scraped, and textured. Subtle variations in tone, from crimson to warmer carmine, give the cube a living skin rather than a mechanical shell. This tactility resists the sterility often associated with geometric abstraction. The brushwork is visible; the hand is present. Even in its strict geometry, the form bears human trace.

In contrast, the central purple plane operates differently. It recedes optically rather than physically. Its cooler tonality and smoother modulation create a perceptual void, a zone that seems to draw the viewer inward without ever confirming dimensional reality. It absorbs more light than it reflects, intensifying the sense that something lies beyond the visible surface—yet nothing can be entered. The exit implied by the title remains conceptually open but materially closed.

The grey field surrounding the structure is not passive background. It acts as stabilizer and counterweight. Its neutrality heightens the architectural authority of the red mass while allowing the volumetric illusion to breathe. The cube does not sit on the surface; it floats within an undefined spatial condition. No cast shadows anchor it. No horizon fixes it in place. This suspension reinforces Babos’s broader inquiry into perception: what appears stable is always contingent on viewpoint.

Within the Cubes collection, Purple Exit advances Babos’s exploration of constructed space as metaphor. The cube—traditionally a symbol of rationality, containment, and order—becomes here a structure of ambiguity. The inner plane interrupts the cube’s coherence, introducing deviation within symmetry. The painting quietly suggests that systems—architectural, institutional, psychological—always contain internal thresholds. There is always an inner chamber. Whether that chamber liberates or confines remains unresolved.

Philosophically, the work aligns seamlessly with Constructive Unrealism. Babos builds with precision in order to expose instability. He uses geometry not to assert certainty but to question it. The painting proposes that depth may be illusion, that access may be projection, and that reality is often structured by what we cannot enter.

From a curatorial standpoint, Purple Exit carries both immediacy and depth. Its formal clarity makes it accessible; its conceptual layering rewards sustained engagement. It is ideally displayed under directional side lighting, which accentuates the textured red planes and intensifies the recession of the purple interior. In such conditions, the cube’s dimensional ambiguity becomes more pronounced, activating the painting as a dynamic spatial object rather than a static image.

Ultimately, Purple Exit is less about escape than about threshold. It captures the moment before passage—the instant when possibility appears tangible yet remains unreachable. Through disciplined geometry and material subtlety, Babos transforms a simple cubic form into a meditation on access, containment, and the paradox of depth itself.