The Hand-Kiss

Sebi works across spray stencils, robotic pen drawing, gold leaf, and digital collage — his practice moves between appropriation and reinvention, art-historical imagery taken apart, digitally recombined, then brought back into physical form. Manus et Machina continues where Thx for the Brush left off — but here, the human hand returns after the machine has drawn. Each piece begins as a robotic pen drawing from a digital collage, then receives layers of spray paint, crayon, and gold leaf applied by hand. The result is a dialogue between precision and gesture, algorithm and instinct. Silhouette and halftone raster compete for the viewer's attention in a perceptual toggle — you see one or the other, rarely both at once. The gold leaf adds a final layer: eternity meeting impermanence, icon meeting street.

The Hand-Kiss — a prince bends to meet a princess's gloved hand, their silhouettes rendered in blue halftone like a still from a Disney movie. Inside the royal couple, a mouth appears — lips parted, biting down on a cross pendant, its tips marked with gold leaf. Grills flash between the teeth. The perceptual toggle is sharp: either the fairy-tale silhouette holds, or the portrait takes over and the ceremony dissolves into something raw and confrontational. The appropriation runs both ways: Disney borrowed its princes from European court ritual, and now the court ritual gets filled with street portraiture. Crayon circles and spray drops mark the surface where both worlds overlap — the hand-kiss and the bite, devotion performed twice, in radically different registers.

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About the artist

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