Right at the threshold of the DOM conceptual space, the visitor is drawn into a challenging play of meanings, signifiers, and stratifications. "Comfort Zone"—the theme of the 22nd solo exhibition by artist Elitsa Baramó—is simultaneously the state in which one withstands the surrounding world and others to preserve oneself, and the locus of the home, which serves as both the point of departure and the sanctuary of personal authenticity.

       At first, the arbitrary act of engaging in this play of meanings proves to be the decisive first step toward encountering the conceptual language "Sediment Process," which its creator, Elitsa Baramó, has unfolded and enriched over the course of a decade. "Sediment Process" is the artist’s organic and vibrant philosophy, combining in her works the raw force of the image with the mathematically precise scalpel of the word-thought. This specific painterly language possesses its own visual syntax grounded in linear perspective, rendering the kinetics of the image through cross-sections. For the baseline (cota zero) of her compositions, Elitsa Baramó chooses the figure of the monolithic stone—a metaphor for human existence as a „slow stone sculpture in progress, shaped by personal choices and will—both personal and divine." Revealed in the slow-motion rhythm of their existence, the images find additional valences beyond the visible through the accompanying reflections in text: thus, the metaphysiciated imagery and plasticity acquire a unique material density. The themes across all phases of the „Sediment Process" are thoroughly philosophical and curated by the artist herself, holding multiple symbols and references of an—aptly captured in title by Prof. PhD Krasimir Delchev—"artistically expressed neo-existentialism"[1].

       Phase One problematizes the freedom of human will and its boundaries—the point of contact between the human and the divine in „The Architect” ([a] cube contemporary gallery, Sofia, 2018). Phase Two explores the „Shared spaces" of kinetics in painting and cinema as humanly conceived and inhabited dimensions in the eponymous art film from 2020. Phase Three, „Remaining and Passing Landscapes”, examines the subjectivity of perception and the surrounding „landscape" ([a] cube contemporary gallery, Sofia, and Bulgarian Cultural Institute, Budapest, 2021). Phase Four is titled „Guardian Angels” and is logically dedicated to "the theme of expanding consciousness at the expense of formlessness and fear" ([a] cube contemporary gallery, Sofia, 2022). Phase Five, „Vertex”, further develops this self-absorption of the living-thinking and creative consciousness in a pursuit of its best version, its absolute, self-transcendence, possible impossibility, or impossible possibility (Rakursi Gallery, Sofia, 2023). Phase Six, „Almost a Landscape, Time in Action” (2026), problematizes the qualitative metamorphosis of the fleeting moment of sunrise and sunset into infinity, transforming the discrete experience of the flow of light into an all-encompassing sense of eternity.

       Thus, „Comfort Zone" emerges as the seventh phase in the unfolding of the "Sediment process"—a concept quietly and meticulously contemplated over the years—of the strange monolithic images in Elitsa Baramó’s painting. These images come alive through an aesthetics of slow motion, gaining relief and depth under the chisel and breath of the word-thought. The comfort zone is interpreted by the artist as negative liberty [3] —the "unlocked door" before which one experiences personal "freedom-from" the anchors of serenity, yet has not yet stepped into the realm of positive liberty, "freedom-to," marked by the choice already made and the ontological responsibility assumed for its realization. According to the artist, defining the comfort zone presupposes self-knowledge, auto-reflection, silencing the fear of the unknown, self-mastery, a playful attitude, an ethical compass, and even „ethical contemplation—being part of the chaos without being noise": a essence-level Stoic imperative of personal authenticity and steadfastness, modernized into an ethical imperative of care for the self, where "the absurd becomes a doorway to new contemplation, an act of resistance against the world’s speed, and empathy—the most radical form of social action." For Søren Kierkegaard, the absurd is the very transition between the ethical and religious stages: the leap from openness to the Other to unanxious existence within the divine Otherness.

"The ultimate boundary of this journey, however, transcends the physical and the social. In its conceptual vector, the project reaches the absolute frame of the ego—the flesh, the body as the primary and final comfort zone," the author shares in her curatorial text. The primary and final comfort zone is the body—as refuge, escape, limitation, and salvation. A comfort zone is also the ontological longing for the objectification and routinization of subjectivity—with all its diverging impulses, from euphoria to exhaustion, and its natural urge to merge with the givenness of the world. This very ontological longing holds the key to touching the breath, the self-aware life, and the pulse of the monolithic „Objects of Thought  ”, „Temporal Arrays”, „Angry Statue”, „Maybe Sapiens”, „Pre-Babylonian Awareness” I. & II., and „Creation”... The comfort