Sebastian Hosu

The painting of Sebastian deals with reality – his reality. It also includes his idea of nature, which in turn is an expression of this reality.

He understands nature as a presence in painting, that is archetypal and not illustrative. But what is nature? Something that precedes us and that we belong to? Still? Or is it a long-lost experience, replaced by today's virtual reality?

Sebastian tries to answer this question not by means of the rational mind, but with painting. In his paintings, memories of a natural presence appear, whereby bodies of people and animals, as well as the landscapes, are soaked with something original – as if the clash of nature and culture had never happened. If we look closely, we can see that the bodies, even if incomplete and fragmented are not distorted or mutilated. They are absorbed by a rushing energy. The bodies become landscape just as the landscape becomes body, in that they mutually nourish each other. As a consequence, the hierarchy between space and figure is abolished.

However, the figure resists.
Thanks to its gravity, it withstands the tendency of nothingness to devour it completely. This heaviness also acquires a physical presence in his paintings: by means of impasto oil paint which creates its own physicality. Sebastian's canvas size also plays an important role: the physical interaction with the painting is more directly experienced by him at larger formats.

There is no nostalgic looking back to a state before the clash between nature and culture, nor is there any illusion of a healthy world. His painting lives from instability, which, through its restlessness, breaks the hoped-for harmony between the “green meat" and the vastness of landscape, bringing them into a dialectical contradiction.

— From Antonio Pauciulo, Painter