ARTIST STATEMENT

Sum up the main character of your work, your long-term interests and themes.

Over the last few years that I intensively devoted to fine art, the nature of my work has changed from painting to a more cross-media approach that works with space, and places great interest in the material and its character in relation to technology, human perception and body, habits and other layers associated with with the everyday functioning of contemporary life and the observation thereof. Chronologically, my long-term interests and motifs include, for example: questions related to the virtual gaming environment that, at some point in my life and the lives of my generation, shaped the answers to real-life questions and, to some extent, still do. Themes touching on hyper-productivity and exhaustion, related mental and physical states, insomnia and deadlines, as well as issues related to D.I.Y culture, popular science and portable technology. The smartphone becoming our extended hand, the body becoming the Swiss knife.

Describe the context of your work – what are your inspirational sources and theoretical starting points, which artists and tendencies do you consider as referential to your work.

I think that one of the starting points that remains in me as a kind of a code, is the virtual origin of gaming aesthetics, its generational influence and so on; something that I use in my work partially as an expression filter - in a well-informed way but not explicitly as a reference - and thus it becomes one of the many layers. We can understand it as a default system that at some point in time influenced people generationally, and has been influencing them to this day; a system the roles of which we understand so well that it becomes subconscious and from which we begin to further build and develop. Recently I’ve been enjoying drawing inspiration from spoken-word sources (podcasts) but also books, online articles, lectures, interviews. I will name only a few:

Weird Studies (Professor Phil Ford and writer/filmmaker J. F. Martel host a series of conversations on art and philosophy, dwelling on ideas that are hard to think about and art that opens up rifts in what we are pleased to call „reality“.)

The Future Thinkers (Media platform, community and education portal dedicated to the evolution of society, technology and consciousness, helping you become better adapted to our uncertain future.)

Realism Materialism Art (Christoph Cox, Jenny Jaskey, Suhail Malik)

Reality Is Analog: Philosophizing with Stranger Things (Martel, J.F.)

Reclaiming Art In The Age Of Artifice (Martel, J. F.)

A Questionnaire on Materialisms (October 155.)

Try to characterise what makes your work specific, where lies its force, what makes it different from the work of artists with similar approaches or themes.

What may make my work seem specific to some, among other things, is one of the layers of interest in where it appears, how is it communicated, researched, shared, documented, archived and so on. Mobile phone as a magnifying glass. Creative work, individual work, but also something that we build together. This may lead me to the differences between my work and the work of people with whom I share ideological and formal interests. In this context, my work is different in certain nuances, for instance in the delicacy when working with details, working with the space as a self-contained system, in composition and layer, the ability to think in certain systematic steps. I try to test my work on various presentation levels, starting with physical spaces such as private galleries and artist-run galleries, or physical spaces serving more as platforms for photographic documentation and subsequent online archiving, where certain conceptual methods can be adopted, and using the instructions from the authority (the artist), the other party (the organiser) creates a physical work that he/she installs in a specific environment, documents it and releases it into the online environment, opening up the question of authorship and so on. The power of my work may lie in the effort to manage to complete it at a given moment, at the same time as subjecting it to challenges and current interests.

 What is your process of work like? Do you spend time on preparation and research? How do you search for your themes? How do you choose the media you work with?

My workflow is divided into two parallel, alternating activities, namely online work and offline work. Most of the initial thinking and groundwork for a project begin by browsing content available online, the contents of my smartphone, as well as the contents of my notepad. Almost everything makes its way from digital onto paper via printing and ends up pinned on a large cork notice board, where all the information that I see almost every morning and try to find connections within gathers. After this phase of decision-making and finalising the concept, I get into more of a shopping layer, a layer that distributes the work outside of me, where I send digital files to ad agencies. Then I enter a more manual, physical setup and I get to the “dirty” studio where, while waiting for print materials, I build different constructions for the said objects, explore the selected materials and their properties in relation to the specific concept, destroy things, dirty them, test, connect, screw, modify, hack, describe technologically, burn things with laser, change solid to liquid and so on. For me, the studio is largely a laboratory where unexpected things happen. A space where many mistakes happen in the process; mistakes that can, however, be used as advantages. The motifs that appear in my work don’t arise from some kind of a planned construct. I try to live in the present, keep my eyes open, and not to be afraid to let interests pass through me in the moment. Recently, there are things like cork insulation boards, modified plexiglass, aluminum, digital prints, plastic, cork dirt, resin, screws, smartphones, portable devices, adhesives, cartons and the like in the range of materials I use. I divide the choice of materials into several layers. I seek materials that are closely related with my work from the very beginning of the concept creation (as I mentioned earlier) through graphic thinking, thinking about an image surface or structure whose third dimension carries the properties associated with the materialisation of a digital image, is thin and can become an object; as well as materials that have a natural origin and bear more structural and functional properties, precisely like cork insulation boards, in contrast with modified plexiglass and the like.

What is your vision for the future? How do you want to develop your work and build on your previous projects? What is your long-term goal/dream?

My vision for the future is to be independent, to guard my mental health, to not lose the will and motivation to work, to further discover myself and what I am an everyday part of through art, whether virtually or physically; to feel at ease with my decisions, keep on surprising myself and gradually uncover and form further possibilities of expression within myself. In the near future, I want to focus primarily on projects that require more time, room for error and slowing down. My long-term dream is to create a real and permanent space for creative people who love their work just as they are interested in the work of others. A space that collects a flowing energy and work drive. When I think about it now, I think that I uncovered a tiny layer of this dream in one of my previous projects - subconsciously and, for the time being, only for myself.

BIOGRAPHY

Upcoming:

10/2019  Launching my new video at Ofluxo Instagram TV

05/2020  State of High Performance, Basis, Frankfurt, Germany.
Kasia Fudakowski, Martin Kohout, Ariane Loze, Claire Fontaine, Jakub Choma,
Pilvi Takala

Jakub Choma (SK, b. 1995) Lives and works in Prague, Czech republic. In his work develops the aesthetics of digital waste with emphasis on the material nature of the seemingly immaterial digital environment. He uses his picture assemblages as segments from which he creates within installations larger wholes in the form of ambient assemblages. He has recently used cork, which he works and shapes in different manners while deliberately employing the often contradictory associations connected with this material. His art is typified by the aesthetics of DIY, a phenomenon that he places in contrast with the current trends of new materialism.