Jakub Špaňhel

Jakub Špaňhel is member of the generation of the new millennium which does not solve the modernist issues of painting form (and, in fact, the post-modern concept of radical plurality) any more. And still, his works served the advocates of various theoretical concepts as their authentic shop window. There is, however, an explanation for this: although the situation in art changes constantly, beautiful paintings simply remain. Paintings by Špaňhel are immensely self-evident and self-explanatory in the context of the “proper” painting and it can be said with certainty that they are its intrinsic part. Jakub Špaňhel’s paintings undoubtedly contain what many people try to describe in words as precisely as possible and what it is only very difficult to say out loud without irony in the era of lost innocence. His virtuoso talents allow him to elaborate on most various and seemingly banal subjects – from gas stations to cathedrals. It is in no way easy to describe Špaňhel’s monumental, dark canvases without getting entangled in the jumble of “colorful” idioms as sentimental as the music from the radio when you drive through a nigh landscape and your headlights carve the painter’s images out from the darkness ahead. His paintings thus become the expression of all the lost certainties which can be today solely stored and quoted as desires.

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Jakub Špaňhel

* 1976, Karviná, Czech Republic

Education

1995-2002 Academy of Fine Arts, Prague (J. David, M. Knizak)