Jan Valik
www.janvalik.com
@janvalik_now
Statement:
Works of Jan Valik are tangentially connected to the ideas of landscape as a layered psychological space where relationship between human perception and these conjured territories consists of complex ties but also of fine nuances. His work balances on the edge of perception where abstract and figurative becomes fluid - evoking spatial and pictorial ambiguities and atmospheres interlocked with a tension of simultaneous presence and absence.
This applies also to the theme of the two submitted works. These semi-abstracted visions combine displaced, yet naturally shaken subject position with fragments that merge figurative forms with abstract and elemental atmospherics. A fragmented landscape that is both crumbling but also being put back together. The contradiction of the land’s permanence with its volatile and arbitrary borders contrasts deeply with one’s own imagination projected onto it. This is a persistent theme in Valik’s painting practice, underscored by contemporary issues of global displacement and migration, environmental anxiety and posthumanist understanding of histories. Painting, as a constructed, invented or a discovered space, allows Valik to synthesise ideas to explore these notions of non-verbal immersion to fictive territories and impossible travels with the interest in their transformative possibilities.
www.janvalik.com
@janvalik_now
Statement:
Works of Jan Valik are tangentially connected to the ideas of landscape as a layered psychological space where relationship between human perception and these conjured territories consists of complex ties but also of fine nuances. His work balances on the edge of perception where abstract and figurative becomes fluid - evoking spatial and pictorial ambiguities and atmospheres interlocked with a tension of simultaneous presence and absence.
This applies also to the theme of the two submitted works. These semi-abstracted visions combine displaced, yet naturally shaken subject position with fragments that merge figurative forms with abstract and elemental atmospherics. A fragmented landscape that is both crumbling but also being put back together. The contradiction of the land’s permanence with its volatile and arbitrary borders contrasts deeply with one’s own imagination projected onto it. This is a persistent theme in Valik’s painting practice, underscored by contemporary issues of global displacement and migration, environmental anxiety and posthumanist understanding of histories. Painting, as a constructed, invented or a discovered space, allows Valik to synthesise ideas to explore these notions of non-verbal immersion to fictive territories and impossible travels with the interest in their transformative possibilities.
Suddenly Ungrounded
160 x 135cm
Oil on linen
2022
160 x 135cm
Oil on linen
2022