Czech artist Jan Uldrych questions reality in his fleshy and atmospheric paintings. Though the artist hesitates to provide any specific meaning for his work, we can find some clues in his titles; paintings like “Anatomy of memories” and “Mild decomposition landscapes” point to Uldrych’s interests in the visceral and anatomical, which he abstracts into Rorschach test-like images. Earlier works portrayed muscular bodies combined with animal heads and foggy still lifes of animal skulls.
Working primarily in oil and acrylic, Uldrych’s newer paintings look more like photographs of tissue submerged in murky water, others bearing more specific features such as teeth, skulls and bone structure that gets lost in a dreamy mist. In one image, the artist refers to “Synesthesia”, or the production of a sense impression, relating to the relationship between senses of the body, and how they are stimulated.
“I have no desire to paint only things I can see with my eyes. I want more than what we commonly call “reality.” I’m interested in the internal structure of being, something original, something that seeps from other planes of consciousness,” he says. “It may evoke landscape painting to some people, but I don’t feel it that way. For me these are natural forms, a play with natural principles. I aim to play with the forms on the canvas in the same way the Universe does in space and time.”