Jan Valik
Degree: MA Painting
University: Royal College of Art
Graduation Year: 2024
New Blood Art Commentary
Jan Valík paints thresholds: between land and memory, figuration and abstraction, light and its shadow double. Working primarily in oil and watercolour, his surfaces are built slowly and intuitively, until something coherent emerges in sensation. The result is atmospheric, layered, and alive with ambiguity.
Valík’s paintings do not offer traditional resolution. They offer something deeper: integration. A kind of suspended coherence that is not fixed or closed but held. There is often a centre of gravity in the work, a sun, a rupture, a mass. Marks drift, hover, dissolve. And yet the paintings do not feel chaotic or fractured. They feel composed. Contained. Something has been metabolised.
Titles such as In Between Land and Memory and A Sudden Shine echo the logic of dreams, where place becomes symbol and light might mean both contact and collapse. Throughout, there is a refusal to narrate. The work does not explain itself. Instead, it transmits mood, tempo, mythic residue.
A Czech-born artist based in London, Valík completed an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art. His work is held in the Andrea and Manuela Bille Collection and has been exhibited internationally, with upcoming solo shows including Beijing’s Megafield Gallery. Yet the paintings remain unmoored from geography. They emerge instead from a kind of internal field shaped by psychic impression rather than cultural declaration.
To engage with a Valík painting is to enter a liminal zone. An ecosystem of gesture, absence, and symbolic charge - dreams with edges.
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Artist Statement
I think of my paintings as territories and/or ecosystems. From accidental marks that can lead to unexpected shifts of imagination to patiently developing painting’s layers, I’ve been always fascinated with the brushwork’s capacity to conjure and imply fictive spaces, evoke ideas and abstract atmospheres.
Balancing the perception of space to open its further associative and metaphorical qualities, my painting practice is a continuous effort for the metamorphosis of a trace into a vision.
Solo Exhibitions
(2023) Small Infinities, Galerie Amart, Vienna, Austria
(2022) Shifting Places, Husk Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
(2022) Breakthrough, L.L. Contemporary, Toronto, Canada
(2021) Landscapes, Galerie Amart, Vienna, Austria
(2020) Verge, Husk Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
(2019) Abstract Reality and Temporary Neighborhoods, Industra Art, Brno, Czech Republic
(2019) Triple vision, Cin Cin Gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia
(2018) Inner weather, Chisou Gallery, Komono, Japan
(2018) Uncertain territories, ABC Gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia
(2017) Plethora and a quet world, Niche Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
(2016) Fragile garden, Art Space Nov, Pardubice, Czech Republic
Group Exhibitions
(2023) Echo of the Depth in Space, Pragovka Gallery, Prague, Czechia
(2022) Selects pt. 2, London Paint Club x Koppel Projects, London, UK
(2022) Now Introducing, Studio West, London, UK
(2022) RWS Open, Bankside Gallery, London, UK
(2021) Contemporary British Painting Prize 2021, Huddersfield Art Gallery, Huddersfield, UK
(2021) Of Other Places: Gardens of Dreams, Art Exchange, Colchester, UK
(2020) In Arcadia, Husk Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
(2019) Room with a View, Niche Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
(2019) Muster Actions, Star Art Gallery, Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, Chongqing, China
(2019) Expansion of Reality, Gallery Amart, Vienna, Austria
(2018) Plain Air Valdis Bušs, Mark Rothko Art Center, Daugavpils, Latvia
(2017) Tao Hua Tan, Gallery of Xuancheng Library, Xuancheng, China
(2017) Floating Fellows, Motoazabu Gallery, Saku, Japan
(2017) L’art Slovaquie, Gallery of Cité internationale des Arts, Paris, France
(2016) “2016”, DOT. Contemporary, Bratislava, Slovakia
(2016) Subtilities, DOT. Contemporary, Bratislava, Slovakia
(2016) Finalists of Painting 2016, Nedbalka Gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia
(2015) disJOINTED, MauMau Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey
(2015) Finalists of Painting 2015, Nedbalka Gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia
(2014) Drawing Box, Associazione Culturale Luci e Ombre, Bologna, Italy
(2013) Drawing Box, Ranelagh Arts Centre, Dublin, Ireland
(2013) Drawing Box, Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast, Northern Ireland
(2013) Beyond That Place, Gallery AVU, Prague, Czech Republic
(2013) Anonymous Drawings, Galerie Delikatessenhaus, Leipzig, Germany
(2013) Anonymous Drawings, Galerie Nord/Kunstverein Tiergarten, Berlin, Germany
(2012) Diplomanti, National Gallery in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
Competitions, Prizes & Awards
(2016) Painting 2016 Prize, VUB Foundation, Intesa Sanpaolo Group
(2015) Shortlisted, Painting 2015 Prize, VUB Foundation, Intesa Sanpaolo Group
(2011) Shortlisted, EXIT Award 2011, University of JE Purkyne
(2021) Shortlisted, Contemporary British Painting Prize 2021
(2022) Shortlisted, Now Introducing Award, Studio West, London