Luca Levai: The Searcher
The Searcher is a large scale painting installation from artist Luca Levai.
The work explores narratives around the idea of home, grief, safety, uprooting and forced displacement. The Womb-like installation maps the artist’s own introspective themes and expressions through somatic visual art.
Levai explores large-scale painting as a way to archive life, to process change, to encapsulate movement in time and space. She questions the meaning of safety in our ever changing world and emphasises the idea of coming together, of gathering, of connecting with fellow humans under a shared space.
The Searcher is a personal journey, yet is meant to be experienced in community. Just like a plant being pulled out with its roots and then replanted to thrive in a new environment, we humans go through multiple replantations in our lives.
The Searcher is a nomadic installation piece, putting down roots for a short while in many different environments to connect and bring us together. The work was created throughout the span of one year using 50 m of upcycled textiles.
Luca Levai is a London-based multidisciplinary artist working across fine art, textiles and performance. Levai’s practice explores intuitive mark making, action painting and large-scale mixed media through experimental movement and investigating the connection between the physical and emotional body. She weaves together internal landscapes to create a kaleidoscopic quality of fragmented worlds inhabited by feelings, experiences and dreams drawn from both the conscious and subconscious, filtered through everyday life.
Often working with upcycled textiles, the canvas becomes a fertile ground for exploring space, abstractions and the balance between intention and spontaneity. Her large-scale, site-specific setups and mark making tools act as extensions of the subconscious, functioning like a visual journal and reflects on embodiment, movement, and the physical nature of painting.
Originally from Budapest, Hungary, she lived and practiced in many countries around the world, from Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Australia and the UK, each influencing and shaping the evolution of her art. Completed an MA in Textiles at the University of the Arts London, she is currently living and working in London as a Visual Artist as well as a Textile Artist for film. Recent exhibitions include a group show at SB Art Studios, Candid Gallery and Macfarlanes Art Prize 2025, as well as a fine art residency program at the Cyprus Collage of Art in Paphos, Cyprus.
All are welcome at the Opening Reception. No RSVP required.