Dušan Sekela is one of the most outstanding Slovak painters and in my opinion, being familiar with his paintings, also one of the leading representatives of abstract geometry. He became a part of the artistic scene at the beginning of the 80s, the times of freedom when it comes to artistic performance, choice of themes and ideas, as well as expression of one´s philosophy and opinions. And so, his philosophy “The most important thing for inspiration is to stick with one´s illusions” has been proving it is true through Sekela's artistic evolution. His early artworks are dedicated to humans and researching their expressions in society, specific environment as well as in nature. Gradually, he starts to turn away from the real shapes and aims his focus on ideas and informative stimuli of the era, because as he claims “Art is not a metaphor for life, but for its ideas.”. During his creative artistic development, new paint, shape and spatial configurations, the material composition of relief paintings on the verge of "sculpture painting" began to take on importance. The paint plays an important role in Sekela's artwork. He applies it on an atypical pad, a specific synthetic material, that allows him to create a three-dimensional painting – relief, where he applies the paint by smearing, wiping, layering, pouring, dabbing, and dripping. The vibrating geometric shape overlaps itself, confronts or harmonises with the coloured surface. A compact morphology is created based on juxtaposition of isosceles triangles, ellipses, spirals, rosettes, squares or quadrilaterals. When perceiving his artwork, we are impressed by infinity and limitlessness of space, inviting us to enter the unknown, unexplored and secret distances. Therefore, his cycles such as “Nekonečno” (transl. Infinity), “Ergosféra” (transl. The ergosphere) and “Írisovanie priestoru” (transl. Irrising of space) are unusually impressive. Their interpretation stems from the philosophy of Sekela's approach to the reality and fantasy. According to his own words: “I do not base my knowledge on the mythology of astrology, I rather believe, and I am fascinated by scientific knowledge of the astronomy and other scientific disciplines. That is the place where the richness of the mysterious human knowledge of the COSMOS and our spiritual and artistic potential lies.”. And not only that, we can see that with the increasing amount of information that the present offers Sekela is trying in many of his artworks to visually verify these information stimuli whether they are probable or not. As a result, he is confronted with important questions which answers are hidden in his “sculpture paintings”. His questions such as “is intelligence coded in the existence of Cosmos? Where does it come from? Does it disappear after one´s death, as with one´s death, the whole universe dies or does its energy remain? Is the entropy the only law that is valid?” became essential for him.
The cycles into which Sekela encodes the answers to those questions are called “Trojjedinosť” (transl. Trinity), “Entropia”
transl. Entropy), “Homocentrickosť” (transl. Homocentricity), “Mytológia svetla” (transl. Mythology of light). A natural artistic interpretation is the dynamic gesture, the phenomenon of light, the contrasting colours and, above all, the very expressive movement in the structure of the surface. However, the three-dimensional spatiality is also remarkable, a kind of, as Sekela says, an attempt at 3D "Imaging allows me to offer the perception of the artefact through senses other than the visual, for example haptically for the blind". In his works, however, he has always expressed a desire for harmony in a chaotic world, trying to bring elements of spirituality and balance into the inner world of modern-day human beings. His artworks carry a message for the modern civilization, that embraces the idea of not harming oneself, other people, and one's surroundings. And not only that, by a certain harmonizing charge in the individual cycles he creates a necessary symbiosis with modern society, a dialogue between man and his environment. It is natural that Sekela admires, as he himself says: "The breathtaking beauty of the cartography of our earth, the enchanting twinkle of mysterious stars, the fascinating richness of interpersonal relationships, love and art."
PhDr.Dagmar Kudoláni Srnenská, PhD.
Dušan Sekela was born on March 3, 1955 in Medzilaborce. From 1974 to 1980 he studied at the Deparment of Monumental painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, under the guidance of professors Elvíra Antalová, Ján Želibský, Róbert Dúbravec, Dezider Castiglione and Ivan Vychlopen. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions at home and abroad, for example in France, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Portugal, Ingliz and Austria. Dušan Sekela´s paintings are in collections of Art Gallery in Prešov, Gallery M.A.Bazovský in Trenčín, Gallery in Nitra and East Slovak Gallery in Košice. His artworks are in private collections in Slovakia as well as abroad in Canada, Switzerland and Austria. He is a member of the Board of Freelance Visual Artist Society and the Association of Slovak Artists. In 2024 he won the Grand Prize of the Slovak Union of Visual Arts at the XI. Biennale of Creative Visual Arts.
