I am like a fascinated pilgrim and painting is the best way, how to show, what the world of my pilgrimage looks like.
Jiri Hauschka
Jiri Hauschka is one of the most interesting artists to have emerged in the Czech Republic during the quarter of century that has followed the fall of the Communist regime.
Edward Lucie – Smith
Biography
1965 Born, Sumperk, Northern Moravia, Czechia
Currently he lives and works in Prague
The owls are not what they seem
Paintings by Jiri Hauschka take us to an environment of confrontation, or rather symbiosis, of man and nature. Nature influences us more than we admit. Some painters have sensed it for a long time – especially in places where there‘s a bit more of it, like in the northern regions with plenty of forests and lakes and bubbling streams, or in the south with jungles and waterfalls and howling monkeys. In nature, events involving man may be more raw, more to the bone. The name of my text concerning Hauschka‘s paintings is a reference to David Lynch’s legendary TV series that was set in a similar northern environment. You may remember Twin Peaks, a town at the US-Canadian border, with a rural atmosphere, forests, mountains, a sawmill, a roadhouse and an actual sheriff. And – of course – with a bizarre story and characters that were so real and believable that we got entangled in a story without a narrative sense that was not supposed to be grasped rationally. We, the viewers on the verge of obsession, were getting increasingly immersed and feverishly excited – cooled only by the cold raw mountain wind – to the point where we even expected to find a wrapped corpse behind a random tree in our local woods. After Lynch‘s quintessen – tial Twin Peaks, everything was different. Maybe this is another guide how to look at Hauschka’s paintings. To accompany him to his tidy painting wilderness.
In recent years, or rather in the last two decades, we witness the art of painting looking back at its history,examining its options, seeking what is still attractive and alive in past layers, and finally realizing, to its surprise, that it can still invigorate today‘s audience through its colours, views, compositions and ideas, and be attractive for contemporary artists. And it realizes, that figures set in a certain spatial or scenic configuration possess a visual and semantic potency that upsets and attracts a contemporary person just as it did in the decades and centuries before us. Fragments of past visuals are pieced together with the fragments of tomorrow’s imagination.
Jiri Hauschka turns to this type of painting method that utilizes colours and symbolic connotations, prevalent at the turn of the 20th century – he positions himself in that period next to the Canadian painter Tom Thomson (1877–1917) – and used by contemporary painters. Reality is transformed by the painter‘s narration into layered storytelling, where the artist’s memory is interspersed with new experiences, views, desires and emotional turbulences. In the case of Jiri Hauschka, we find ourselves in the wilderness of painter nostalgia, where we look for the conceptual person, and in urban civilization, which has barely any options left and where we can therefore feel and see the colours of wilderness. Ultimately, we can be justified in our impression that nothing is as it seems at the first and second glance.
Martin Dostal
PUBLICATIONS
Jiri Hauschka Monograph, Edward Lucie-Smith, Martin Dostal, Kant 2021
Movements in Art since 1945, Edward Lucie-Smith, Thames&Hudson 2020
Stuckism International, Victoria Press London
Enemies of Art, Victoria Press London
Stuckism: Remodernising the Mainstream
COLLECTIONS
National Gallery Prague
Private collections: Czechia, France, United Kingdom, Italy, USA
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS AND PROJECTS
SOLO
2023 Gallery Schlassgoart, Esch (Luxembourg)
2023 Muzeum Sumperk (Czechia)
2022 Valentiny Foundation, Schengen (Luxembourg)
2022 UFFO Gallery, Trutnov (Czechia)
2021 GAD – Giudecca Art District, Venice (Italy)
2020 CRAG Gallery, Turin (Italy) 2019 Black Swan Gallery, Prague (Czechia)
2015 House Art Gallery, In the Middle of Somewhere, Prague (Czechia)
2014 Oko Gallery (Town Hall Gallery), Opava (Czechia)
2013 Michal‘s Collection Gallery (with Albert Ruiz Villar), Prague (Czechia)
2012 21st Century Gallery, Prague (Czechia)
2011 Red Gate Gallery, London (with J. Valecka) (Unided Kingdom)
2011 Rabas Gallery, Rakovník (Czechia)
2010 Kotelna Gallery, Říčany (Czechia)
2010 XXL Gallery, Louny (Czechia)
2006 The Residence Gallery, London (Unided Kingdom)
2005 Town Hall Gallery Prachatice (Czechia)
2004 Library Gallery Liberec (Czechia)
GROUP
2023 Stuckists in Ostrov, Gallery Karlovy Vary (Czechia)
2022 „Stuck in Venice“, CREA Cantieri del Contemporaneo, Venice (Italy)
2021 Pallazo de Probizier, Trento (Italy)
2021 NordArt (Germany)
2018 NordArt – Czech pavilion (Germany)
2017 Quintus Gallery, Watkins Glen (USA)
2016 The Stuckists, View Two Gallery, Liverpool (Unided Kingdom)
2015 Stuckism: Remodernising the Mainstream, Studio 3 Gallery, Canterbury (Unided Kingdom)
2014 The Stuckists, Explorers and Inventors, Phoenix (USA)
2013 Stuck between Prague and London, Nolias Gallery, London (Unided Kingdom)
2013 STUCK in Pardubice, Town Hall Gallery Pardubice (Czechia)
2012 Stuckists: Elizabethian Avant-Garde, Bermondsey Gallery, London (Unided Kingdom)
2012 Original and perspective, Klatovy – Klenová Gallery (Czechia)
2011 Enemies of Art, Lauderdale House Gallery, London (Unided Kingdom)
2011 Prague stuckists, Town Hall Gallery Chrudim (Czechia)
2010 „Summer choice“ Gallery Vltavín, Prague (Czechia)
2007 „Stuck in the middle od November“, Topičův salon Gallery, Prague (Czechia)
2006 „The Brighton Stuckists“ Art House Gallery, Brighton (Unided Kingdom)