TZ - JAN POUPĚ / A SET OF VIEWS
9th December 2015 – 21st January 2016
Fait Gallery Preview
Dominikánské nám. 10, Brno
Vernissage: 8th December 2015 at 6pm
Curator: Jozef Mrva
At the exhibition A Set of Views in the Fait Preview Gallery Jan Poupě (1988) presents a new series of his works. This project is a continuation of his latest exhibition Matheria from the Vyšehrad gallery with Petr Vaňous as the curator.
Jan Poupě’s art work is characteristic by the geometric construction of the pictures and limited color range. His early paintings were based on direct observation of landscapes, the human interference with it and the possibilities of mechanical observation. He shifted the view from eye level into the bird's eye perspective and he often substituted the perspective itself by axonometric projection. Thanks to these observations he got to the geometric abstraction as a way how to rationally grasp and represent the hidden patterns of the world. For the geometric abstraction the pattern of a grid and equal division of space is prominent. The author was dealing with these means of representation in the collection Structure, Order, Error with which he graduated at the AVU, and that earned him the Critics' Prize for Young Painters 2014. Into the picture he placed uniformal shapes, most often pyramids and captured their subtle changes due to a perspective sweep back.
Grids, pyramids and modular systems, which he used in his work until not long ago, have recently turned more human. He still uses the serial repetition, but now he uses it as a concrete base, on which he continues to work. He works on the level of the plan, which he constantly remodels, re-composes, improves, but not towards the utilitarian and accuracy, but towards exactly the opposite. The plan is deteritorialised without completely falling apart. His paintings are like architectural designs, thanks to the repetitiveness they have the form of tower blocks or cells. The author absorbs inspiration from brutalism and the ideas of Japanese metabolists. He likes to quote his encounter with the groundbreaking metabolistic building Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo. The main idea of that building, which even at its completion leaves room for further modifications and growth, is for Jan Poupě crucial and reflects in the design of the picture. These architectons mutate in his pictures, sink and stretch, follow the imaginary landscape, they are rendered by malicious software, that does not want to let them settle. This malicious software plays with the audience on multiple levels at the same time. A Set of Views tries to include every conceivable position of the viewer in itself. The viewer is forced to move around the pictures and think, to be able to decode its internal rules.
Jozef Mrva, curator
