A Kittys War

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.

A Kittys War — the possessive is deliberate: this war belongs to a kitty. A soldier's silhouette in red halftone — helmet, rifle, boots — but cut into the uniform is a Hello Kitty in blue, the icon of innocence carved out of the body built for violence. The kitty doesn't sit on top of the soldier; it lives inside, the way childhood lives inside every person the uniform tries to erase. The perceptual toggle that runs through all of Manus et Machina is at work here too — though in this case, both layers stay visible at once, soldier and kitty locked together, neither willing to disappear. Black spray drops scatter like shrapnel across the paper. The colors split the geopolitics: red for the Western military machine, blue for Japan's most successful cultural export — the same West that drops bombs also imports kawaii, consuming the East's sweetness while projecting its own force. One silhouette holds both.

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About the artist

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