Artwork

Jan Valik is a painter who works with a variety of water based media, oil and pigments, to create uncanny psychological scenes on canvas and linen. Born in Slovakia with roots also in Czechia, Valik earned his BA and first MA in Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and completed his postgraduate degree earlier this year at the Royal College of Art in London, where he is now based.

Valuing exploration over rigid outcomes, Valik’s process-driven gestural paintings explore the interplay between intent and accident. “It is this tension between chance and control which is at the centre of my works,” he explains. “I let the medium do its job, and then I react against or with it. The mediums I’m working with—ink, acrylics, oil, spray paint, watercolour, or pigments—each have different characteristics, possibilities, and nuances that are like different dialects with which one can ‘speak.” Employing brushstrokes evocative of calligraphy, Jan works with his own “visual vocabulary” through which to conjure what he calls “non-verbal imagination”– subjective perceptions and emotions that transcend our spoken language. “In my recent works, I’m curious about ways of relinquishing control, to allow  for the ambiguities of emotions to emerge and unfold on the canvas.

Exploring different mark-making techniques, Valik’s paintings chart not only subjective  moods, but also the behaviour of the mediums he is working with—trickles, splashes, and pools of colour bleeding into one another give way to a dialogue between fluidity and structure. These accidental drips, overlapping layers, and the resulting gradients in pieces like Could the Universe Have Been Different or Everything In Between, Everything echo the dynamic nature of light and perception. “Colour is a manifestation of light that filters different wavelengths–it is not a static element, but a dynamic one influenced by light and even our subconscious,” he notes. Considering these embedded meanings, Jan is working with ambiguous hues intentionally minimising certain colours like green—which often connotes landscape—to liberate his work from traditional interpretations and encourage free associations.

Valik’s fascination with what he refers to as “the alchemical side of painting”– the way elements like water and pigments behave–guides his practice that explores how art relates to scientific principles, particularly those found in physics. "In quantum physics, when we look at tiny particles, they seem to exist in multiple places at once, even though we only see them in one location.These ideas drive another side of my exploration in painting–focusing on brushstrokes that appear fixed but can also shift in perception therefore functioning on multiple levels and opening up more possibilities." Working on the verge of interior and outer worlds, Jan seeks to bridge the emotional with the physical to open up an evocative space where these realms intersect.

Valik’s work has been exhibited in London, Vienna, Prague, Tokyo, Brussels or Toronto among others. Most recently he had a solo presentation titled Levity, at the Chamber Gallery in Vienna and since October, Valik has been participating in an artist residency at the Studio West in Wimbledon, during which he is further exploring the contradictions between ‘fluidity and stillness’, and more broadly, the painted surface as a ‘psychological space’. Currently Jan is preparing for his forthcoming exhibitions.