Steven’s Bio
Steven Csorba is a full time visual artist and his paintings reflect and have been enriched by a wealth of diverse life experiences and travels.
Born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1964, his family moved to Vancouver shortly thereafter where he "grew up on the streets" and actively participated in many competitive sports. At the age of 16 his mother passed away suddenly so he moved back to Edmonton from La Jolla, California where he was pursuing scholarships in the arts, academics and athletics.
Csorba then became known for his paintings of sports legends like Wayne Gretzky, Muhammad Ali and his commemorative works celebrating historical events like the Olympic Games where he was Canada's artist in residence several times. You can find his paintings in the National Art Museum of Sports, and in other prominent public and private collections. Steven is also an award winning printmaker and his visionary work has been recognized by the Smithsonian Institute.
In 2003, Steven was diagnosed with cancer and went through 14 hours of surgery, seven weeks of radiation treatments, and five years of recuperation. As part of his cure, he created art. It helped him transcend the experience. Since his recovery, he’s created a cache of paintings that express both a powerful energy, as well as the heroic struggle all cancer survivors go through. Steven is a also a motivational speaker and his combined insights into cancer survival, self-empowered healing and the arts – often make a strong impact on his audience.
As a longtime Edmontonian Steven has devoted countless hours of community service and encourages others to become involved in the lives of Edmonton children. He was also the architect of Alberta's Promise, a Ralph Klein initiative that was designed to build more capacity for children in Alberta. During the past 6 years – through the donation of his art, Steven has helped raise over $500,000 for a variety of charities in Alberta.
Surviving cancer and using art as a tool for healing, reflection and understanding has infused his art with a sence of energy and optimism that has a universal appeal. His current art can be described as "neo-pop surrealism". As a master of visual remix, he employees a strong and fluid command of both traditional and new media painting techniques where one feeds off the energy of the other. The visual collaboration of both medias often celebrate a bold expressionism and optimistic edge regardless of subject matter.
I like to push the limits of everything I do.
My work has evolved from a mashing of referenced pop art and iconic imagery into elaborate multilayered portraits and scenes that depict a more personal interpretation of my life experience and battles. The artist and the work they create are inseparable and for me this includes both the meaning of the work – how it reflects my life experiences – as well the process of making the art. I don’t want to separate one thing from the other. Both are an integral part of the art making process and for me there is always a battle to harmonize between the two – to evoke the emotion of the piece.
My ability to make art using technology: i.e. a mouse, Photoshop and huge 30” Apple illuminated flat screen, is as fluid and organic as it is with traditional medium: paint, canvas and brushes. I love combining traditional mediums and the tools of digerati and my process is now an endless cycle where one feeds off the energy of the other.
Mashng: Warholian Cache of Varied Compositions
Working like graffiti artists, who gain their identity by quickly “bombing” dozens of pieces in one evening – I’ll bomb or mash 100’s of pieces in one session – creating a Warholian cache of varied compositions based on a single theme or subject. It is a very fluid act of visual remix based on an endless supply of appropriated images. These mashed compositions represent a shifting sequence or series of sensations; each sensation exists at different levels, in different orders, and in different domains, brought together in my attempt to unravel the cluster of sensations that I’ve experienced to survive cancer as well as a search for peace in the balance of life.*
Appropriation: Nothing is Safe Anymore
I use the internet as “my wall of appropriation” and elements borrowed represents a cultural recombination of images from all corners of the world. Graffiti art from Poland, Spain, Australia, the US, pop and post modern art elements from online portfolios, throw in some Miro and Paterson Ewan – nothing is safe anymore – I don’t want it to be.
By composing and mashing layer upon layer of elements used in previous works, these various procedures of application and cancellation allow me to obscure the liminal traces of previous elements, putting reproduction and negation to generative use in forming new compositions and possibilities. It is rigorous and endless cycle requiring an aesthetic sensibility to find an endpoint – but there never really is one.
The Top Gets Higher the More that I Climb
My themes range from masked beings and fantasy animal portraits that hover in a space between anguish and a calm stillness – in a fugue of gestural restraint and release each expresses a shocked optimism. A leaping tiger that I lifted from a WW2 bomber, transitions through surreal battlescapes. The fight-game is on and suspense is realized via symbolic depictions of reaching great heights or escaping a dark twisted fantasy of cables and burning houses. The influence comes from listening to rap music – Lil Wayne’s lyrics “The top gets higher the more that I climb” is also highly symbolic of my own life’s path as well as all artists in general. It is a universal theme for anybody with a dream or desire to do better in the world.
These remixed combination’s create individual works that either fall apart to the point of death or survive to form a rebirth. I’ve learned that something new will always come about when you push things hard enough and the result is the revelation of a “new identity”. I want to lead the observer to dramatic action and not them withdraw from it. I want to put them on the edge between what we know and what is unknowable. The motivation for me to keep going is to gain an understanding of how this “new identity or rebirth or truth” actually reflects my life as well as the world we live in – or not.
Duality of Purpose: A Breakthrough
There is a common duality of purpose in my work that combines a struggle for comprehension with a struggle to survive and “breakthrough”. Jump into a clutter of a zillion images and try to distill them so as to make some sense of the world and life is a bit insane – but when the process reveals a “valid” image and this breakthrough occurs – I’ve got something unique for the world to see and experience. There is a protracted intensity in the substance and subject of these breakthrough pieces – they carry a terse expression to the unending contingencies of life and change.
If I am building a "Myth" or painting a "Picture of Reality", I don't really know. I'll I know is that I want to engage with the making of the image as a both a physical and observed act where the revelation of the image, piece by piece, the construction of it – draws me to make more of it.
I like to push the limits of everything I do.
Steven Csorba
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✴Finding peace by filtering through millions of images and content on the internet is pretty screwed up – I know, but it is the world we live today. People use the web and other forms of instant messaging and texting, etc to connect and communicate with others, but ultimately it is to gain some form of understanding or context about their life or business of living. We are increasingly becoming dependent on this new form of communication and it’s various web applications and content to find a “form of peace” based on this better understanding of the world.
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So when it comes to being a “bit twisted”, the rest of the world isn’t to far behind
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me now – is it?
