It all started long ago with a dream...
Born in Stockerau, a place in the wonderfully unspectacular "Weinviertel" in Lower Austria, Stefan Korinek later traveled a lot in his life and lived in Berlin, Calcutta, Copenhagen, Praha and Lagos, among other places. After his passion for art kindled, he also undertook targeted study trips (art trips) e.g. to Kurdistan, Nepal, India and the ex-USSR, which repeatedly revealed new influences and inspirations to him. In his very specific and centered view of the presentation of his feelings and sensations, however, he never trusted a teacher during his years of artistic 'further education', but refined his techniques on his own. A strenuous path, but since 1992 Stefan Korinek has been presenting his extraordinary art regularly at numerous exhibitions and inspires success.
With his special works of art, Stefan Korinek brings order to his emotional world and tries to show his basic attitudes. He believes that everything is connected to everything, that everything causes everything and that synchronicity occurs as a result. For this reason, the gifted artist creates his metallic mandalas to help keep the world in harmony. The ethical principle "Tikun Olam" or "repairing the world" is the main reason for his work.
Working with metal is time-consuming and requires a lot of dedication, so that drawing and patination often go hand in hand and only when Stefan Korinek feels that there is a HARMONY does he begin to break through the copper. The preliminaries to the first punch in the metal often take a long time:
"During my work I say thousands of mantras, which should serve the well-being of all beings. Many mantras with the request for assistance, long negotiations with myself, the thoughts of the 'I Ching", then the first cuts. Everything is in flux, and the destruction creates space and becomes manifest" - says the artist about his creative process. The conceptual continuity on which his work is based therefore has a meditative character.
It all started long ago with a dream...
I dreamed of a canoe adorned with Buddhist mantras & glowing from within. It shone as a whole & made a lasting & above all calming impression on me in my dream.
When, weeks later, I discovered the nighttime sketch of this boat in my dream diary, I saw the image I had already forgotten before my inner eye. I was once again so touched by this peaceful impression that I immediately set to work to realize this project.
In the final phase of the work, which I carried out outdoors, while riveting the individual parts together, it was already getting dusk & it started to rain very lightly. My hands, which had been working the copper all day, literally glowed blue-green from the copper oxide.
Finally done, I packed an estimated hundred lightbulbs into the canoe & pulled it into the nearest tree with a thick rope. There I fixed it & connected the lightbulbs to electricity. Rarely have I been so happy in my life as when the canoe lit up.
"The dream is a closed letter, the contents of which you already know" - Gerhard Roth
This sentence by Gerhard Roth is a good approach to my work. With my art I bring order to my emotional world & try, following my basic attitude, to show that everything is connected with everything else, that everything depends on everything & that synchronicity happens. That's why I make mandalas to help the world/society be in harmony.
The knowledge of transience is also a particularly important concern for me, which I want to show with the patina (thin, greenish layer of weathering). In general, with my artworks would like to give the viewer the opportunity to take a break from this world that is being lived at an ever faster pace, so that they can slow down, relax, dare a journey into the interior and remain in the "here & now".
