Joeseph Kozak

Josef Kozak studied at the Art Students League with W. Fogarty and Robert Beverly Hall. He was the recipient of a merit scholarship for drawing. He spent 1978 and '79 in Zurich , Switzerland where he executed private commissions. Back in America he created shamanic explorations on paper and canvas which were shown in three consecutive years at Prairie Edge Gallery in Rapid City , South Dakota . The artist, who seems to not always live in the present says, "my sojourn in the Baroque theatre enabled spirit communications, Swedenborg's 'visual speech' of the angles, mediumistic experimentations, rediscovery of the beauty of other times and places...the tears of the castrati and the outcast prophets." His work is regularly shown at the Leslie/Lohman Gallery.


His works demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story about the metaphysical.

It challenges the assumptions between our own ‘life’ and ‘life beyond’ ourselves. By emphasizing aesthetics, he creates work through labor-intensive processes which can be seen explicitly as a personal exorcism ritual. They are inspired by a 17-century tradition of works, in which an ideal of ‘Fulfilled Absence’ was seen as the pinnacle.

His works appea...