Speaking of our time in its own matter advocating respect for all forms of Life, visible and invisible, independently of its nature, creed, gender or nationality.
If my artistic choice is to have a Metaphysical and Abstract Language, it is to induce the observer to go beyond a pre-established knowledge. My Body-Landscapes represent a different vocabulary, distant from words, cultures and ego. The artwork and its process* have an holistic approach becoming a powerful tool, a force of healing - to myself, to the other, to the whole.
If we all believed that we are one interconnected Life, we would be one United Nation.
process* Places that I’ve been. I collect what I consider to be relics : witness alive materials and sensations that reveal the genius loci, the spirit of a place, urban and natural. My pictorial expression thus becomes philosophical, sociological and biological language, accentuating the unity formed by nature, the cosmos and the human being, inseparable.
A short film Written & Directed by Filep Motwary. Levitas in Gravitas solo show. Limassol, Cyprus. spring 2023. curated by Lydia Theodoridou. @Space 125.
Filep Motwary is Editor-at-Large at Vogue Greece, Independent Fashion Curator, Author & Fashion Critic, Film Director & Photographer.
RESPECT
A place imposes itself on my journey. The approach between us is holistic, an integral dialogue between the spiritual, environmental, and anthropic dimensions. This conversation—this harvesting of witness-materials—takes form thanks to long meditative walks and encounters with the inhabitants, in nature as in the city.
Rather than turning towards what is solid, figurative, and rational, I am interested in what is liquid, abstract, and sensual. Water is fertility, purity, source of Life and metamorphoses. Water is at the heart of my observations and omnipresent in my works, at once a source of inspiration, pigment, and reflection of the human condition. From the Amazon to the Mer de Glace, passing through Venice, Cyprus, Lanzarote, the Atlantic Forest, the Chapada dos Veadeiros, Naoshima, Porquerolles, the streets of Paris and Curitiba, each of the places visited so far, independently of its territorial identity, has Water as a common thread. Each of them plays an important role in the Universe.
The witness-materials I harvest reveal the genius loci: water, plants, shells, minerals, soil, and conversations are living pigments, imbued with ancestral knowledge and experiences. True relics, they testify powerfully to the past, present, and future of a place, and of ourselves. Pictorial expression thus becomes a biological, neuroscientific, archaeological, philosophical, sociological, political, cosmological, and spiritual language. I thereby emphasize the indissociable unity between nature, the cosmos, and the human being.
If my artistic choice is to have a metaphysical and abstract language, it is to transcend, thereby, a pre-established knowledge and its rational references: words, cultures, and the ego, and finally to provoke sensations—or reveal the mysteries of Life. I invite the observer to feel an integral part of these painting-body-landscapes or simply, to feel the vibration, the lived experience, the energy, or furthermore, to feel themselves (free!) by diving into the universal ancestrality that the work constitutes.
The surface of the work is integral and apparent. The alliance between the figure-painting and its support** is a metaphor for the acceptance of our dualities. These are not opposed, but complementary, in the image of Water that mixes, emulates itself, and passes through. A vision of the Universal world where harmony between all forms of Life is present.
*the spirit of a place. **the support is chosen with a precise intention for each work: linen, cotton, gauze, origin of the paper, glass, etc.