Melting Reality

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.

Melting Reality — the acid-house smiley, rendered in red halftone and dripping off the paper, genderless, universal, the face we put on a burning world. Inside it, Christ looks upward — a kitsch rendering like the Mary in its companion piece Holy Mary and Banana, eyes raised as if communicating with God, transcendence trapped inside pop culture's cheapest mask. A leaf sprouts from the top like the stem of an apple — a bite from the tree of knowledge, the original moment reality started melting. Gold leaf eyes replace the smiley's dots, turning a rave logo into something almost devotional. The smiley has its own art history: Harvey Ball designed it in 1963 as corporate morale, acid house claimed it in 1988 as chemical euphoria, Cobain drew it melting for Nirvana as grunge irony — each generation loading the same circle with a different kind of fake happiness. Here it holds the face of Christ, and the question flips: is faith the ultimate smiley — the comforting mask we put over an unbearable reality? Or is the kitsch rendering the real blasphemy — not mocking belief, but reducing it to decoration? The smile stays. It always stays.

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About the artist

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