LA GIOIA ASCONA ARTHOUSE ARTISTS

Jan Dostál

ARTHOUSE ARTIST JAN DOSTÁL

The special thing about Jan Dostál is:
He can scale his stainless steel sculptures from a few kilograms to several tons.
His unique style is always very light and dynamic.

Elegance combined with dynamics are expressive elements that the artist Jan Dostál literally incorporates into his sculptures. That is why the resulting feeling of his work seems very light, even if some works weigh several dozen tons.

The characteristic material of his works is clearly steel, i.e. tubes and sheets of various lengths, which he cuts, twists and deforms in every conceivable way. Typical of his works is the stainless steel in which the world around him is reflected. More rarely you can find colored variants of white or yellow metal.

Elegance combined with dynamics are expressive elements that the artist Jan Dostál literally incorporates into his sculptures. That is why the resulting feeling of his work seems very light, even if some works weigh several dozen tons.

The characteristic material of his works is clearly steel, i.e. tubes and sheets of various lengths, which he cuts, twists and deforms in every conceivable way. Typical of his works is the stainless steel in which the world around him is reflected. More rarely you can find colored variants of white or yellow metal.

The most common scale the artist works with is the large format – the work transcends our perceptual limits, and one cannot and should not grasp it in its entirety. The statue is spatially designed so that you can find yourself under it. At this moment, the surrounding world recedes a bit into the background – reality ceases to exist and space for self-discovery emerges.

The dynamism that appears in all his works is found in the playful use of the different thicknesses of the individual tubes. Changing the diameter creates a fluid movement, and the whole work begins to live.

Jan Dostál, a native of Olomouc, creates mostly abstract works inspired by sacred geometry, the universe, fantastic animals and various organisms in the role of symbiont

are inspired. The sketches of the sculptures are either drawn in pencil on paper or digitally modeled on the computer.

The demanding installation, combined with the heavy, difficult to handle material, often can not be done without the help of heavy machinery. The trade-off is that it is virtually impossible to damage or otherwise destroy the work. The direct interaction of the viewer with the sculpture through touch is a necessary and desired factor for the author.

Recently, the artist has also begun to discover a smaller format that opens up new possibilities. You have an overview of the work and can look at it from different angles. In newly created works he often works with light or movement – rotation.

– Kateřina Fucsiková

JAN DOSTÁL

Résumé

1943 born in Danzig
1945 moved to Hamburg
1962–69 lived in the USA
1969 studied literature and art history / painting
1971 started painting
1981 member of the BBK Hamburg. Moved into a studio in the Haus für Kunst und Kunsthandwerk / Hamburg
2019 pictures now exclusively available from La Gioia Ascona Arthouse

JAN DOSTÁL

Exhibitions

Shanghai Art Fair, China // Art Beijing, China // Art Madrid, Spain // Galerie Puncto, Vienna // German embassy in the Vatican City // Grace Denker Gallery – Urknall und Stille, Hamburg // Artgeschoss Wolfenbüttel // Nordart – Kunstwerk Carlshütte // Galerie auf Zeit, Wismar // Museum ship “Cap San Diego”, Hamburg port // Galerie Anne Moerchen, Hamburg // Berliner Liste 2008, Berlin (Galerie Anne Moerchen) // Galerie Anne Moerchen, Hamburg // Projekthaus Altona, Hamburg // Galerie Curare, Hamburg // St. Jacobi Kirche (Südschiff), Hamburg // Katholische Akademie, Hamburg // Changing exhibitions in own studio // Ernst-Deutsch-Theater, for the staging of “Montserrat” // Galerie Bollhagen, Worpswede // Galerie Metzner, Hamburg // Galerie L., Hamburg // Kunsthaus, Hamburg // The Lion King, Hamburg

Sazarin’s works are currently being shown exclusively at La Gioia Ascona Arthouse. Viewings can be arranged by contacting the La Gioia Ascona Arthouse.

There is no beauty in itself. Beauty arises only in the friction of contrasts, which are melted in the confrontation to form a composition.

The studio as a place for smelting or forging – for Sazarin, it is chiefly a workshop where work is done. And, in his opinion, the real artist is characterised by diligence. As far as Sazarin is concerned, skill is a key component of ability, and luck plays its part in success, but hard work is the real foundation.

In his late work he has found a simplicity which at the same time allows an emancipated interplay of colours. The simplest thing, which has nothing in common with the naïve, is shown above all in the generosity of white surfaces and the all the more concentrated culmination of colour events. By “emancipated”, Sazarin understands above all allowing any colour at all once it has found its direct placement. Work such as “No” or “Silent” display an almost Asian character, which has more in common with Chinese ink painting or Japanese Zen drawings than with European painting.

Just as the silence of his studio in Hamburg city centre is music to the artist’s ears, so too the “white silence” music behind colour explosions such as “Wave I” or “Chinese Landscape”.

The characteristic thread running through Sazarin’s work is what he likes to call “unwillingness”, because only in overcoming the “painter’s ego” (analogous to Gottfried Benn’s lyrical ego) does he manage to achieve artistic freedom. What originally happened as a creative accident was later “worked up” into an aesthetic concept. While Sazarin was finishing off a drawing in 1978, he accidentally upset his coffee pot over the picture, producing an image with totally new structures. “That’s when I learned for the first time to really see: I was bowled over looking at the scenic structures which were both blurred and clear at the same time, and which I had no intention of making.

The picture was not only improved, it was one of my early fortunate failures.” Sazarin then began to gradually incorporate and control this random element in his work. As well as being his most important assistant, chance also supplied advice, impulse and vision.

Some of the most important influences on Sazarin’s aesthetic understanding comes from Japanese Zen philosophy and the Taoism of Lao-Tse. Sazarin sees thought and speech simply as an intellectual tool and support. The image is as free as the music and has already smothered the head before it gathers words. Sazarin has always been fascinated by the suddenness of the moment (the impression) that a picture can evoke in the viewer. Such suddenness (impact) paired with an impulsive force in the vernacular is characteristic of almost all his pictures. Sazarin’s style of painting happens in the moment, without any before or after. In this creative moment, the canvas responds itself as it is shaken, sprayed, dispersed, painted, or glued… and in many other ways.

Sazarin’s work includes paintings, drawings, etchings, rust and material works. Coming from figurative drawing, Sazarin freed himself over the years more and more “from the recognisable figurativeness” and became increasingly abstract. In many of his works, landscapes, bodies, and portraits are only hinted at, because the artist is not interested in directly reproducing something that has been recognised, but in “turning solutions into riddles”. The preference to create spaces and symmetries from surfaces allows his pictures to be turned through 360 degrees. The picture is not compromised in any way through rotation. On the contrary: the viewer’s gaze gains new perspectives and explores unfamiliar landscapes, so that a picture can contain several other motifs and layers. This “polyperspectivity” is one of the main features of Sazarin’s art.