Born in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1963, Alex Cerveny is an artist whose artistic practice spans to painting, illustration, engraving and sculpture. Bearing an uncanny resemblance to the oeuvre of surrealists like André Magritte, Remedios Varo or Dorothea Tanning, he examines the realm of dreams while pondering about man’s relation to his surrounding ecosystem. His iconography is very rich and recalls ancient practices like alchemy or witchcrafts. The simplicity of the line heightens the proximity between his paintings and Giotto’s temperas. Language is often displayed in his compositions stressing yet again similarities with ancient manuscripts like the Voynich manuscript or even the Seraphianus codex. In 2005 he participated in the Nasca Project where he travelled to Peru with a group of scientists to explore the Nazca - geoglyphs made by the Paracas and the Nazcas. Illustrations is another piece of the puzzle, and is no wonder that Cerveny’s drawings and paintings make us think of René Laloux’s film La Planète Sauvage. Nature is part of Cerveny’s interests, in some of his paintings like Arcadia he exhibits how the utopic dream of man’s symbiosis with nature has failed and transformed into a bleak vision where industrialization and progress are sought.
Exposition à la Fondation Cartier: Nous les arbres.