Jan Vytiska
Jan Vytiska (*1985) drew considerable attention to himself during his studies at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ostrava. That is why he was nominated by the school for the international competition of the best graduates of art faculties StartPoint. In 2011, he won the UniCredit Bank Prague Photo Young Award for artists under 30 at the Art Prague Contemporary Art Fair, and the following year he was selected as a finalist for the Critics' Award for Young Painting.
Although Jan Vytiska worked at the Intermedia Studio at the Faculty of Arts in Ostrava, we can perceive "intermediality" in his conception as a specially conceived process of creating a painted image. For the purity of the expression, one voice and one language were not there and there is no place. Instead, the word comes from hybridization, mutation of motives, attitudes and inspirations. However, the printout is primarily not about the explosive volatilization between different media, but rather about their kind of implosive absorption, a special synthesis of diametrically different aspects incorporated into one and the same medium.
In the paintings, she arranges strange post-apocalyptic scenes in a suggestive way, composed of fragments of ghostly scenery and filled with various individuals, perhaps humans, perhaps mutants, or simply monsters, whose visage in charred or musty ruins seemed to refer to morbid details from life in Wallachia, overheard stories filled with absurd situations and points, or even a fascination with B-movie film production, street and DIY aesthetics.
The result of this scrum of motifs and inspirations are paintings and paintings that will captivate both the absolute layman and the educated spectator with their strangeness. In them, Jan Vytiska was able to rise above the speculativeness and conceptualization of the artistic gesture and replaced them with the directness of an imaginative suggestion. At the same time, however, he balanced the danger of cheaply effective liking based on the fascination with morbidity or descriptive illustration. What he is fascinated with, and what repetitively emerges in his imagination (a protruding eye, a wolf man, a burning wooden house), is not an instrument of a superficial shock strategy longing for crowd acceptance. On the contrary, it is a confirmation of the fascination with otherness and strangeness, the fascination with the dynamic tension arising in the connections of the discontinuous, in the violation of the regular, the visibility of the unexpected or the presence of the traumatic.
Comic and tragic intertwine so naturally and closely in the backdrop of Tiské paintings that it seems that it is the author's intention to show the viewer that both belong inseparably, that it is part of our everyday panoptical cabaret, which we do not want to know or suspect. Cabaret, in which there is no room for criteria and rankings, for high and low, but where, on the contrary, something special despite all restrictions, obstacles and all improbability sproutes or appears as weeds and overgrowth emerges and thrives in forbidden zones, abandoned settlements, inhabited barracks or forgotten brownfields in the middle of our cities.
text: Martin Mikolášek
Solo exhibitions
2021
At the end of the world,Galerie Celnice, Malá Úpa
2020
Everyone will cry at the end, Třinec City Gallery
Dead is life, Life is Dead, Dead is you,You are Dead, Strom, Brno
2019
Black Lake, Zlín Observatory
2018
A landscape possessed by darkness, Chrudim Exhibition Hall
2017
Paradise, Trafo Gallery, Prague
Twilight of the Gods, Dot Gallery, Bratislava
2016
You are as bad as the gossip says, so you invite the devil when he comes to you, The Chemistry Gallery, Prague
2015
My eyes still have to throw food, Industrial Gallery, Ostrava
2013
THE DEVIL IS OLD AND CHANGED, Szara Gallery, Cieszyn
I Have Better Sins Than Yours, Gava, Cheb
2012
The Fllames Bothered My Eyes, Jiří Švestka Gallery, Prague
Černý Sabat, Kaple Gallery, Valašské Meziříčí
That Beautiful Day When The World She Hated Ended, the House of Art, Opava
For Every Broken Heart I Will Pay In Hell, Industrial Gallery, Ostrava
2011
Succor Punch, La Place Forte, Paris
I Have a Movie Like That, Eyes Are Carved There, I Want You To See It! Make Up Gallery, Kosice
Valašský hřebec aka zlodějíček z Prahy, Ferdinanda Baumann Gallery, Praha
Valašský hřebec, Nová Síň, Ostrava
2010
Best off, Soda Gallery, Bratislava
Valašský hřebec, NoD, Prague
2009
Untitled, Youth Gallery, Brno
2008
KiljÚ fakjú, Skutečnost Gallery, Prague
2007
Club Vrah, Rožnov pod Radhoštěm
Group exhibitions
2021
Vanitas, DOX, Prague
2020
A dream within a dream, Edgar Allan Poe and Czech visual arts, Veletržní Palace, Prague
2019
We are not Detroit, jsme Ostrava!, Kulturform Alte Poste, Düsseldorf
Bracia / with Vojtěchem Kovaříkem, Galeria 18A, Warsaw
2017
Neue Schwarze Romantik, Muzeul Național de Artă al României, Bucharest
The Art Of Making Catastrophe, Zoya Museum, Bratislava
2016
Life Is Painful And Brings Disappointment, Massakr vol 1 , Trafo Gallery, Prague
Life Is Painful And Brings Disappointment, Massakr vol 1, Pilsen Gallery, Pilsen
2015
You can only correct an arched fairy tale, New Gallery, Prague
PLAINS IN CHAOS, Prague House, Brussels
2013
Folk - Recycling, Tic Gallery, Brno
Valmez ,Triennial 2013, Rudolf Schlattauer's Award
2012
Zlín Youth Salon 2012, Regional Gallery of Fine Arts in Zlín, Zlín
Tune the Eye, Trafačka Gallery, Prague
2011
Next Targets, The Chemistry Gallery, Prague
Critics' Award for Young Painting, Gallery of Critics, Prague
Succor Punch !, La Place Forte, Paris
Artbanka - Kick off, DSC, Prague
Museum of Young Art, Prague
Art Prague 2011, Mánes Exhibition Hall, Prague
Good Luck Hunting !, Nitra Gallery, Nitra
Dom Hrozy, Fru Fru Gallery, Bratislava
Czech Painting, Wannieck Gallery, Brno
2010
120 x 120, 66 Gallery, Prague
Teleport, Beer Bar, Brno
Weak Year, Sýpka Gallery, Valašské Meziříčí
Master Quest, Gallery 12, Zlín
Next Wave (Ostrava Contemporary Stage), G99 Gallery, Brno
Gift, Karlín Studios, Prague
Operation, Hlubina Mine, Ostrava
Ostrava Kiss, (A) VOID Gallery, Prague
Gärtner Fritz Gallery On The Road
Start Point, GASK, Kutná Hora
Pod Jezevčí skálou, Nod Gallery, Prague
Sound, Beach, Puck, Suk, Cella Gallery, Opava
Start Point Selection, NTL Gallery, Prague
2009
Freeze Fest, Landek Mine, Ostrava
Monster Horror Show, Hygienic Station Gallery, Prague
This train stands at the fuck station, Stanica Gallery, Žilina
He whipped at the braid, Killer Club, Vrah, Rožnov pod Radhoštěm
Camera Oko Festival, National Cultural Monument, Michal Mine, Ostrava
Prague !!!, Studios Úhonice, Prague
2008
Future artists, Galerie Aula, Brno
Purple B-rain, Szara Gallery, Cieszyn
Popo popular, Hygienická Stanice Gallery, Prague
2007
Jiří Suruvka will present, Jáma 10 Gallery, Ostrava
Ropovod 01, Galerie Emila Filly, Ústí nad Labem
Sensor Gallery, Prague
Contacts, Sýpka Gallery, Klenová
2006
Umbilical Cord, National Cultural Monument, Důl Michala, Ostrava
Domino Dinner aneb Baník - Sparta 5:1, AVU Gallery, Prague
