[Gallery Walk] Dreamlike Depiction of 'Aquatic Creatures'... Jan Kalup's First Solo Exhibition in Korea

Yan Kalup Solo Exhibition 'Beyond the Atolls'
At Horiart Space Until June 10
"Dreaming of Exploration Through Mysterious Underwater Creatures"

"I dreamed of exploring a beautiful world that cannot be seen from the outside and is unexpected, by looking through mysterious underwater creatures. These creatures felt so fragile that they seemed destined to disappear someday. This work focused not only on issues like global warming but also on the beautiful underwater life forms that I see, feel, and imagine?creatures that might vanish if undiscovered."

Exhibition view of Jan Kalup's solo exhibition 'Beyond the Atolls'.
[Photo by Horiart Space]

Jan Kal?b, a Czech artist who started with graffiti and has presented various contemporary art works, conveys messages filled with dreamy visions and utopias through works based on cubes and circles. Twenty-six years after beginning his first graffiti piece, his works still embody the 'symbolism and essence of Jan-style graffiti.' Like constructing a virtual world without limits or boundaries, he presents an artistic world realized through his unique harmony.

Horiart Space and Regina Gallery are hosting Jan Kal?b's first solo exhibition in Korea, 'Beyond the Atolls'. This invitational exhibition is his second solo show in Asia, following the one in Taiwan this past March.

The artist gained significant attention by sublimating the emotional changes of the era he personally experienced in the politically turbulent period of Europe, including the reunification of East and West Germany, into his works. Notably, he has built a unique artistic world as a graffiti artist who was unseen in the Czech Republic since his late teens.

As the exhibition title 'Beyond the Atolls' suggests, the artist imbues his abstract paintings with his own dreamy visions and utopias. Like coral reefs encountered in the vast ocean, they offer new excitement and present a window of illusion guiding viewers to a new world. The organic forms on the canvases, which blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture, create new vitality depending on the viewing angle. One can glimpse a vivid sensation as if capturing the moment when tiny cells sprout one by one.

Artist Jan Kalup holding up the back of a direct three-dimensional spherical work to explain.
[Photo by Kim Heeyoon]

Born in Prague in 1978, the artist grew up as part of the second generation of Czech graffiti artists and witnessed the Velvet Revolution, a peaceful citizen revolution without bloodshed. In 1989, the collapse of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia opened the borders, and the graffiti culture that came from outside instantly awakened the artist’s sensitive artistic sensibility. In the early 1990s, 15-year-old boys roamed the streets of Prague late at night, tagging their own marks with spray paint whenever they found a suitable spot. Jan was the leader and was arrested several times because of this.

The artist founded the symbolic crew DSK (Da Style Killas) with his friends and embarked on a pilgrimage journey from Berlin in 1994-95, traveling across Europe and eventually reaching New York.

He recalled, "During this period, I didn’t use my real name but pseudonyms like ‘SLESH, CAK, CAKES, Point.’ In the early 2000s, during my New York pilgrimage, I painted on about 250 subway cars and trains."

In 2002, the artist entered the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, the oldest and most prestigious art academy in the Czech Republic with a 200-year history. Through graffiti, which he had practiced since childhood, he deeply studied the relationship between writing forms and content and expanded his expressive range. By analyzing letter shapes, colors, line drawings, and scale, he developed larger 3D graffiti sculptures and gained attention by exhibiting them on the exterior of buildings around the school.

Exhibition view of Jan Kalup's solo exhibition 'Beyond the Atolls'.
[Photo by Horiart Space]

The circular (圓) forms presented by the artist simultaneously embody the concept of the sphere (球) as presence and the hole (空) as emptiness. Along with vivid colors, his works display a mysterious vitality that embraces the coexistence of wholeness and imperfection, movement and stillness.

The artist defines, "My paintings point to the material world, but they do not aim to capture anything concrete." However, he explains, "I try to create something that does not yet exist in this world and visually realize its essence. Sometimes the shapes are fluid, evoking biological forms, and other times the geometric shapes remind one of the macrocosm of the universe. This is merely a ‘process of changing forms,’ but the most important question for me is how much of the universe’s essence the work itself contains."

The diverse color juxtapositions in the works satisfy both the perfection of painterly texture and the aesthetic of spatial emptiness viewed from multiple perspectives. The subtle blending of colors is achieved through gradation, and the entire completion process is the artist’s pure manual effort.

Kim Yoonseop, director of the iF Art Management Research Institute and planner of the exhibition, stated, "Jan Kal?b’s works seem to express a yet undisclosed natural vitality through the artist’s inspiration, and the spherical forms he creates show characteristics distinct from those of well-known artists like Damien Hirst, Yayoi Kusama, Ugo Rondinone, and Anish Kapoor. Thanks to this, we encounter unparalleled peaceful rest and tranquility through the gateway of abstraction that Jan presents."

The exhibition runs from May 2 to June 10 at Horiart Space in Cheongdam-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul.