ARTIST STATEMENT

Jan Poupě

My long-term interests have primarily been painting and objects. Recently, I have been increasingly more interested in portraying the schism between program and free will, between the prefabricated and the original. Or what kind of creative impact can a mistake have on the original plan. I resolve this issue by constructing spatial installations and by employing various artistic means in the field of classical painting. I am interested in commonplace schemes/methods of reading a painting, such as a perspective which I adjust by using false or double vanishing points so that a new impression of space emerges or that the painting manipulates the viewer. Simultaneously, it is also significant for me that perspective has a historical tradition and connection with depicting space in Europe.

Despite the difference in form, I feel a connection with artists such as Thomas Bayrle, Frank Stella or Olafur Eliason. It keeps surprising me how a similar interest in the same subject can be conveyed in different expressive forms. The context of my own work in the wider area of the visual depiction of reality is something I am still exploring. Nevertheless, I think that this context is to some extent determined by my experimenting and testing out the permeation of new/different media and by its relation to technical construction, scientific models, and the dilemmas associated with architecture and town planning.

Some of my works share their visual language with the work of the so-called “Konkretisté” or of Groupe de Recherche d´Art Visuel (GRAV). They differ from them, however, in their emphasis on what might be called ‘processuality’. Specifically, they differ in the thematisation of the process itself, such as the strict planning of the process of painting – a complexity that cannot be achieved. In my work I strive for utmost accuracy, but it is the inaccuracy that makes it interesting. In this way I reflect on the obsession with the system and the structure of our society. In my paintings I employ alternative processes to which I assign symbolic meanings.  

Simultaneously I explore the relationship between the viewer's perception and his/her sensitivity to the materials and physical work accumulated in a painting or an object... in the context of the possibilities of digital print or parametric graphics - anonymously created products.

      I see my work as continuous. This is the result of, for instance, expressing myself by using a system which I apply to motifs used earlier. In this way, each painting both learns from and develops the previous one. Nevertheless, my work can still be divided into several thematic lines. Among my main sources of inspiration are architecture in the context of the perception of space, urbanism and its social impact, and fascination by natural phenomena such as aerodynamics and geology and their influence on the plasticity of landscape.