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Carole SEBOROVSKI (b. 1960, CA) is a New York City artist, known for producing richly sensual, exactingly crafted sculptures, drawings, and paintings. Incorporating a wide range of materials, her work blends disparate cultures and spiritual concepts.
Born in San Diego, California in 1960, she received her BFA from the California College of the Arts in 1982. Desiring life in a culturally rich environment, Seborovski moved to NYC in 1982 to continue her studies at the New York Studio School, where she began to focus on drawing. Two years later, she enrolled in the graduate program at Hunter College in 1987 and earned her MFA degree in painting. In 2006, after installing a large exhibition of her work in Germany, Seborovski returned home to her studio and hit a creative block. In the hope of freeing herself from this block, she enrolled in a night class in ceramics. The meditative process of building sculptures with clay coils opened a new avenue of creative expression for the artist to engage, adding to and expanding upon her existing practices of painting and drawing.
Seborovski’s totemic sculptures, abstracted biomorphic drawings, and relief paintings embody a stew of cultural and religious references. Intrigued by embellished reliquaries, African fetish objects, Zen ink paintings, Hindu sculptures, Minoan figures with upraised arms, and amulets from ancient Egypt, her work taps into diverse religious and ritualistic art practices. Seborovski holds the belief that art makes manifest the undercurrent of our shared yearnings regardless of our culture or place in time. Undulating ceramic sculptures are formed by mirroring the coiling technique that has been practiced globally for thousands of years. By placing one wet clay coil on top of another, the artist joins these coils together with a small wooden tool. The resulting forms are an erotic embodiment of the artist’s touch. In her drawings, the erasures give the impression that forms fluctuate between arising from and disappearing into the void of the page. And like a Zen ink scroll, equal attention is given to the play between negative and positive space. She often treats the paper like an object, where it is cut, folded, and collaged. All these elements contribute to a subtle yet rich textural dimension in her drawings. In her relief paintings, Seborovski often incorporates metal leaf, paint, beads, rope, sand, clay, and mirrors. Much like African fetish figures where materials conjure up mysterious forces, Seborovski holds the belief that art and the materials from which it is comprised hold power. Through her combination of materials and the topographical forms that result from her touch, these sensual pieces straddle the line between opposites and point toward the spiritual. Seborovski’s work resonates like ineffable objects waiting to be unearthed by future civilizations.
Since 1984, Seborovski’s work has earned her exhibitions in galleries and museums both nationally and internationally. Most notably solo shows at Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris and Cologne; Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NYC; Locks Gallery, Philadelphia; and John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco among others. Seborovski has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Seborovski’s work is represented in numerous museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, NY, Metropolitan Museum, Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum, San Francisco Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., and the Museo Cantonale d’Arte, Lugano, Switzerland among others.