New Rituals

In my quest for rituals to overcome the numbness of society, the spirit of my art is growing within my tribal community as well as in my artistic material. 'Tribal', 1 understand as the nostalgic feeling of the lost sense of belonging. The most essential part of my creativity is the process of interaction with my subjects/ objects which leads to the final result. These archetypal projects create rituals, dreams and memories. It also awakens dormant passions allowing for personal growth and transformation.

After many years of working together with my tribe, we have developed a strong bond of openness and trust. The core of my work is the naked human being, who represents openness to experience from within and with others. Tribal participants learn to inspire and support one another, to share strength and vulnerabities. Primal expressions that viewers may taste, share and advance by confronting their own experiences of tribal empire in themselves and others.

Sebastian Holzhuber's artworks are reminiscences of scenes we have believed are forgotten; of buried emotions, collective dreams, and individual recollections They are the painful memory of the loss of unity and thE search for one's own way, the confrontation with one's anxieties and longings. But they are likewise the joyful perception of one's own body and a manifestation of sensual 'joie de vivre'.

(Karin Wolf, catalogue,
Sebastian Holzhuber Selected Works, 1987-1993).

Sebastian Holzhuber, born 1949 in Vienna, Austria, studied art therapy and practised in Calcutta, India, among other places. He studied painting at the Alanus Art Academy in Bonn, Germany and large scale fiber sculpture with Magdalena Abakanowicz in Poland. His work has been shown in more than 150 international exhibitions in USA, Canada, Netherlands, Finland, England, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Spain, Georgia, and elsewhere. Since 1979 Sebastian Holzhuber has been living and working in Amsterdam.