3x3 Contemporary Czech Art in Berlin with Jan Smejkal

The first artist with Czech origins who we will present after the
summer break in the series Contemporary Czech Art in Berlin is
Jan Smejkal (born 1948 in Beroun, CZ).


Jan Smejkal studied at the Academy of Arts, Architecture &
Design in Prague in 1967 and then continued his studies at
Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main from1968. He is mostly
interested in the process of capturing moments in his drawings
and transmitting them into paintings. Since 2000 he lived for
about twenty years in Berlin and together with his partner Ljuba
Beránková he ran the gallery space Bleibtreu.


In his work, he focuses on the capturing of different records of
impressions, impulses, pieces of things, details on postcard
format papers, which he produces wherever he is and creates a
huge archive with drawn memories. These records are then
transmitted to paintings, text walls or postcards. He applies
words in different ways on a monochromatic canvas so that the
viewer himself can compose his own sentences. The paintings with
inscriptions should be understood as a whole.


He presented some paintings on this year's Positions at the booth
of the Hilgemann.art Gallery. We took that as an occasion to make
this interview and Instagram Takeover.


You can find more info on Jan Smejkal on his website:
https://jan-smejkal.com