A Shocking Experience Behind the Curtain, the first major exhibition of new paintings by Jakub Matuška aka Masker.
“In the World Behind the Curtain, I Feel Around for Dreams at Night”
The Czech Centre London presents A Shocking Experience Behind the Curtain, an exhibition of new paintings by Jakub Matuška aka Masker, the award-winning representative of new figurative painting in Central and Eastern Europe, renowned for detailed combinations of digital manipulations, airbrushes and masterly use of traditional drawing and painting techniques. The artist returns to the UK with a first major exhibition in more than a decade.
For Jakub Matuška, 2023 was a pivotal year, crafting his own stylistic universe as one of the most prominent figures on the Czech art scene. He celebrated his newfound confidence with an extensive monograph, A Man of Special Shapes, summarizing fifteen years of artistic development and maturation. This was accompanied by two outsized exhibitions: the critically acclaimed installation When the Wings of Swallows Obliterate a Granite Block from the Face of the Earth at the Castle Riding School in Hluboká nad Vltavou and the popular exhibit The Sphere, Or You’ll Pass Ten Stones on the Way to the Abyss at Villa Pellé in Prague. Simultaneously he has prepared a larger presentation at the international stage, where he has been making his mark since his prolonged stays in London and New York, and through representation by galleries in Paris and Leipzig. In the spring of 2024, he launched a major installation in Tokyo’s Shibuya district, and now continues in London, taking over the both Kensington galleries of the Czech Centre.
Matuška's work has been recognised for its meticulous combination of hand-drawn sketches, digital interventions and acrylics applied on canvases with both sprays and brushes. His richly detailed, vividly coloured figurative paintings, which explore existential yet poetic themes from contemporary urban life, balance the weariness and melancholy of its subjects with pastel lightness and implicit humour. The post-analog response to the intersection of the "old" and virtual worlds gives rise to a sophisticated interplay of digitally manipulated motifs expertly executed in traditional painting techniques, wholly revealed only in close, personal interaction with his large-scale canvases.
A Shocking Experience Behind the Curtain presents the selection of the last two series of Matuška’s paintings, most of which are being exhibited for the first time.
Listings
- Event title: Jakub Matuška aka Masker: A Shocking Experience Behind the Curtain
- Date: 08 Oct 2024 – 24 Jan 2025
- Vitrínka Gallery, Czech Centre London
30 Kensington Palace Gardens, London, W8 4QY
&
Bouda Gallery, Czech Centre London
132 Palace Gardens Terrace, Kensington, London, W8 4 - Free Entry, REGISTER HERE
- EXHIBITION OPENING and London launch of the retrospective monograph Jakub Matuška aka Masker: A Man of Special Shapes
- Tuesday 8 October 2024, 18:30 – 21:00 - Free entry, REGISTER HERE
- OPENING HOURS:
Tue – Fri 10am – 5pm - or by appointment - ACCOMPANYING EVENT:
Artist and Curator Tour: 5 December 2024, 6.30 pm
REGISTER HERE