PETER BUBAN

As you can notice through my socials I define myself as professional hedonist, dark artist & designer njoyin’ in the middle of branding, occultism, dark art & extreme metal music. Maybe the added info about my 37y life journey could be some kind of the fresh news. I am based in Bratislava - capital of Slovakia. Many of my works are clearly inspired by the dark occult, which is connected to my mental attitude and philosophy. I've always been a big fan of true old horror movies with an occult or demonic theme and extreme metal - especially black metal. My works mainly contain themes of blasphemy, religions, death, skulls, inverted crosses, various sigils, symbols and the like, which can appear mysterious, frightening, depressing, even unpleasant to an "ordinary" person.

My effort is to disturb the recipient in an unconventional way, to confront him with a not entirely clear side of life and at the same time to give him space for his own interpretation of a specific work, because I am convinced that every human being has a dark, insidious and mysterious part of his own personality.

I've always been a big fan of true old horror movies with occult or demonic themes and extreme metal - especially black metal. During the pandemic, however, I had more free time, so I started reading books by Aleister Crowley and more intensively following various thematic profiles on Instagram or occult-themed websites.

Being a designer myself and "dark art" excited me, my interest in it naturally resulted to the point that I started creating artworks in this spirit myself, packaged and presented under my own brand. I wanted to give depth to my works, so I was inspired by different ones citations from the aforementioned occult books. However, I also looked for inspiration in the Bible, other philosophical or historical books, in songs or in thoughts from them, from scenes, events and legends. But what I studied about the occult, of course, influenced me. So I transferred it to my work and satisfied my hunger for creativity, other than the one that I do for living.

I was definitely influenced by the subculture of music I was listening to. I also knew that it disturbed a lot of people, which made me even more attracted to it. There's just something about the dark occult that fascinates me and I can't quite define it. I cannot say about myself that I am an orthodox occultist, as people might imagine under this term. I do not practice or deal with any dark occult matters. I live a normal life, I run a business and I am passionate about graphic design - especially branding which I do for living. There are no sacrificial altars, black candles, pentagrams, mysterious gloom, or anything else you might think of regarding my dark artistic work in my household.

Occultism - especially in its dark form - is connected to my life philosophy and mental attitude. Above all, however, I use it as inspiration for the creation of "dark art". You could say with a smile that I'm kind of a part-time occultist.