Exhibition: Sebastian Karvay

Mystika každodennosti (The Mysticism of the Everyday)

“In the woods, too, we tend to see only one half of every tree. We forget the wind.” — Tim Ingold

Czech visual artist Sebastian Karvay (b. 2002) has so far worked and exhibited mainly in Brno as a student at FaVU VUT (Faculty of Fine Arts, Brno University of Technology). He has long been concerned with the spiritual dimension of tangible experience, understanding the artistic process as a means of sensitivity. He contemplates the many layers of the lived world, enters into dialogue with them, and transforms them, most often into drawing. The artist conveys the trajectories of personal existence through a re-materialization of reality, moving from haptic and audiovisual perception toward the spiritual content of the environment surrounding the human being.

Sebastian finds his initial creative impulse in today’s weakened awareness of the sacred, in an effort to penetrate beneath the surface of life’s quiet events while resisting the ego. The great divinity is potentially found not somewhere outside, but within the simple now. In a sense, Sebastian’s work to date shows parallels with 19th-century Romanticism, for example the illustrations of Gustave Doré, as well as with Czech Symbolist printmaking and some of the mystical registers of Josef Váchal, Bohuslav Reynek or František Drtikol – yet he keeps moving away from magical, archetypal romanticization toward an authentic transmission of lived moments.

At the Contemporary Art Festival Uničov, the artist is showing his bachelor’s thesis, created in Painting Studio 3 under Veronika Vlková – an open cycle of eight large-format drawings with the working titles Vyklízení hnoje (Mucking Out Manure), Sprcha (Shower), Seník (Hayloft), Okno naproti kamnům (Window Opposite the Stove), Pletení (Knitting), Filcování (Felting) and Lis (Press). Precise graphite strokes on old found paper reveal objects, subjects and activities connected with the artist’s native region, to which he keeps returning: handicrafts, farming, caring for animals and the landscape, and pragmatic local ecological solutions – all unfolding in cyclical rhythms. After completing the regular necessary chores, Karvay records his ideas and sketches motifs as a preparatory phase before transferring them onto large surfaces.

The work presented here, inspired by the seemingly mundane, naturally highlights the value of repetitive manual activity and emphasizes the human being as part of a community and its environment – regeneration and the conscious experience of reality at an unhurried pace. Slightly abstracted compositions with traits of mediumistic art articulate individual impressions on the level of feeling – the age-old interconnection of spirit and matter, rather than deliberate pictorial documentation. As with layered watercolor, the light source plays a fundamental role, emerging dynamically from successive layers of graphite. The images come into being slowly, with intense concentration accompanied by almost meditative moments; formal modification lifts them out of a particular time and space into an endless timelessness. The resulting works then become spaces for contemplation and invite mindfulness – that is, becoming fully present and in contact with a specific sensory stimulus.

Curated by Julie Dostálová