Sebastian Hosu: Event Horizon

It has been said that the only way to slow down time, is by stopping.
And that is what I would like to invite the audience who come to see this exhibition to do.

To stop,
and embrace it all.

Whilst collecting from an array of references and incessantly finding inspiration from life itself, Sebastian Hosu uses a mix of media as he persistently continues the exploration between the figurative and the abstract. Offering us here Event Horizon a strong solo presentation of the artists latest body of work where emphasis is on creating landscape as a potential space for experience.

“I think it was the flow of my life which decided to form me into a Painter.”

As the artist beautifully blends the body and nature on canvas, Hosu is also very cognizant of how interconnected life is with his practice as an artist. Where milestones from his life experiences have come to form unique parts of his work. So, the artist continues, to entwine not only the abstract and the figurative but also art and life. Having realized early on in his life that drawing and painting are existential to him and the only real forms of expression, Hosu persists to explore new spaces. Most recently he does this through a more pronounced flat application of colour, a testament that can be seen within this latest body of work. As Event Horizon mainly focuses on Hosu’s work on canvas and wood board his drawings nontheless hold a core part of the exhibition, where the dialogue between his drawings and paintings are richly intensified.

In painting and drawing Hosu has traced a markedly individual path through his organic forms, linear structures, and spatial investigations. Resulting in a unique mark making that channels for conversation between figure and nature, making us find the extraordinary in the ordinary. The human body in relation to nature continues to be an important theme in Hosu’s work as the exhibition brings together a series of artworks that resonate alternative modes of being and perception.

Amidst the interest in landscape, space, and movement the work further allows for exploration on how the humankind interact with nature and how we are inescapably linked to the natural world. Hosu’s artworks invite meditation on how our digitally and materially saturated world shapes the way we experience timeand place. They are steering the viewer to think about the meaning of nature and how humanity find oneself relating to it, especially in a time of a digital age where so many of our experiences today are completely artificial. So, whilst the work is not attended to be political it invites the viewer to think about ones surrounding and our relationship with nature. Agnes Martin was once quoted “It is not about facts, it’s about feelings. It’s about remembering feelings and happiness. A definition of art is that it makes concrete our most subtle emotions.”

Pleasure and visual shock are vital elements for Hosu in the correspondence between the audience and the work on display. The artist wants us to be fully engaged by the presence of the paintings, wanting us to feel that they are alive in order for us to be able to fully absorb them in their dynamic movement. Ultimately the works on view in Event Horizon offers an experience similar to that of a pendulum that swings between rest, leisure, life and nature and as the viewer is confronted with these works, they capture us and hold us in a liminal emotional state. The result? Is slowing down the perceived passage of time to an overall intensified experience of the exhibition.

Text: Angeliki Kim Perfetti