The Choreography of the Evolution:
Metamorphosis of the spirit

Trying to describe what the paintings of Romanian-born, German artist Valeriu Sepi are about is always a challenge. They are always masterfully executed because Sepi has long been the master of his medium. They are always mesmerising because no matter what the subject matter, his paintings always say something to the viewer.

Perhaps that is the secret of Sepi’s work; that underneath they are about us as human beings, and it is on that level they appeal to us. Many of Sepi’s previous works have focused on the human body; they have portrayed the beauty and movement that expresses the inner spirit of the person. It is a theme that may still be discerned in this collection of work.

All the paintings and drawings celebrate the period between two Christmases when Sepi lived in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, between 2003 and 2004 in Singapore, and in them we again perceive the artist’s expression and celebration of the inner spirit.

He watches the way that a woman moves, the way she spontaneously dances on the beach, on the streets and in the church. The place does not matter, for the dance comes from within; the artist perceives the inner movement that is the human spirit striving to break free of the boundaries imposed by our physical bodies. It is the striving of the spirit to evolve, to move beyond what we are and become something more, something greater. What the drawings capture is not the superficial erotic beauty that so many images of the body portray, but the beauty that most people do not see, and do not know exists.

Where does this inner dance come from? This too, the artist attempts to answer and interpret. Many of the paintings are of the sea, of birds, and many intimate the deeper expression of spirituality that many people discover through their religion. For the artist the water represents the beginning of all things; from water life emerged, and to the water we strive to return, for only there are our bodies relived of their weight and limitations.

In Brazil, at the water’s edge, Sepi found people living in the caves worn out by the sea with the passing of time. Like primeval beings they emerged each day to eke out a living from the water, gathering molluscs that they cooked and sold, and what they did not sell they ate. These are people, who are still part of the water, and in the paintings they appear to have moved beyond the body, the water has freed them and as seagulls they rise above the crashing and pounding of the sea.

High above the cliffs, above the cave dwellings of the sea people, stands Rio’s futuristic modern art museum. It is one of the city’s greatest sources of pride, a monument to the past and to the future. Architecture also features in Sepi’s work. But what has this to do with the dance of evolution? Buildings too, the artist appears to be saying, are part of the carefully choreography that we create to carry us forward.

Our buildings are magnificent, we can create churches and temples, giants of glass and iron and stone. The beautiful church where the women danced is reflected like a mirage in the glass walls of the cathedrals of commerce. But for all their greatness they are puny compared to that which exists within the frail human body, they are shells within which we confine the spirit further. They appear as illusions on the canvas, the least tangible of all the images the artist tries to capture.

And so the artist moves on, line by line, brushstroke by stroke, guiding his audience on, urging them to look deeper into themselves. He leads us to the mountains, for the human spirit always looks upwards, seeking to free itself from the confines of being earthbound. And in the mountains that overlook Rio there is the figure of Christ looking down on the city of glass and steel, as though urging its earthbound inhabitants to keep striving to break free and soar.

One of the most moving and powerfully poignant paintings in the collection is the triptych of the crucifixion, but this is not a quasi-religious message that the artist is trying to convey. The anguished figure is in the process of being released from everything that holds us back as humans, and on careful scrutiny we realise that the figure appears to be evolving into a bird. This is a spirit set free to move forward. That the artist has expressed this spiritual evolution through the figure of Christ is irrelevant – it could equally have been a reference to a Ghandi, a Buddha or a Mohamed.

Then in one single image – one painting that is as simple as it is profound – we find the answer! It is the answer to what Valeriu Sepi’s work is all about; it is the answer to that question every one of asks inwardly every day.

It is a painting of the sea at daybreak as the sun begins to rise above the horizon. The water changes from the blackness of nothingness and begins to take on the colours of the day. The heavy night air begins to expand and rise, and as it does, as people open their eyes to the promise of a new day, a new beginning, the sea birds also begin to rise.

They appear from nowhere and spread their wings, but they hardly seem to move. The air currents catch them and lift them up, higher and higher until they become dots in the morning sky and then disappear from view. As the birds rise above and into the unfolding day, we realise why we dance, why we are compelled to build monuments to ourselves. We are using the choreography of evolution so that one day we too will become like the birds, soaring high above the water, free of our bodies at last.

Dr. Sian E. Jay