L E V I T Y
A new solo show coming up at CHAMBER Vienna
It is with great pleasure to announce a new solo show titled ‘LEVITY’ in Vienna.
L E V I T Y
Jan Valik X Chamber Vienna
25 September - 31 October
CHAMBER Vienna
Wipplingerstrasse 25, 1010 Vienna
opening hours:
Mon - Fri 9am - 6pm
Sat 9am - 4pm
Opening on Tuesday 24th September from 6pm
About
In a state of levity, where sensations, thoughts and things feel afloat and shifting, meanings keep on emerging only to slip and fade away to resurface differently. It’s a vulnerable yet sturdy state, exposing its own fragility and strength at the same time. It’s within these contradictory but complementary qualities upon which ecosystems, natural or artificial, are built and sustained.
Exploring painting as an open yet precise kind of ambiguity has its roots in the very nature of one’s subjective experience of the world in the multiplicity of complex relations. An experience deeply ambiguous, layered, fluid, confusing and continuous.
I approach and consider my paintings as fluid and psychological territories moving between perceptual ambiguities, emotions and evocations of otherness. Held in a strange balance and uncertain of fixed meanings, these semi-open ecosystems are responses to the world in flux of contradictions in effort to reach from subjective towards something universal.
States of flow, simultaneously desired for a time yet uncertain if persisting, essentially challenge the efforts for well-defined clarity in our daily life we naturally crave. Yet, in its own ambiguity, the state of levity paradoxically offers a sense of catharsis. It grants permission to embrace impermanence, encouraging us to become comfortable with the ebb and flow of existence, to appreciate moments that arise spontaneously and acknowledge the inevitability of their passing.
Allowing for a temporarily borrowed liberty, the state of levity is not merely an escape from the rigours of life; it is an invitation to cultivate a deeper relationship with the myriad of experiences that shape us, the acceptance of the fluidity of our circumstances in the dance of all the uncertainties. A space for both the lightness and the weight of our existence.
BIO
Jan Valik, a painter from Slovakia based in London, holds a degree from Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and recently finished his postgrad studies at the Royal College of Arts in London. He was awarded a VUB Foundation Painting Prize 2016 in Slovakia and also was shortlisted for Contemporary British Painting Prize 2021 and The Morrison and Foerster Art Prize 2023 in London.
Held in a charged balance and embracing the uncertainty of fixed meanings, Jan approaches his work as fluid and psychological territories moving between perceptual ambiguities, emotions and evocations of otherness.
His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Galerie Amart in Vienna (2021, 2023), L.L. Contemporary in Toronto (2022), Canada, Suju Gallery in Japan (2024) or Husk Gallery in Brussels (2020), as well as in group exhibitions in the UK, across Europe, in China and Japan. Valik has also participated in Artist-in-Residence Programs at BankART in Yokohama, Japan and Mark Rothko Art Center, Daugavpils, Latvia.
