Breathe Motherfucker!, DSC Gallery, Prague (2018)

Masker sees the world from above. Breathe Motherfucker! invites you to DSC Gallery. After his successful show at Dukan Gallery in Leipzig, one of the greatest talents of contemporary art returns to Prague’s DSC Gallery.

“It’s nothing vulgar, but a clear command associated with a basic life necessity – Breathe! Breathing and movement stimulates thinking,“ explains the curator of the exhibition Petr Vaňous the provocative title of the exhibition. On view at DSC Gallery will be a latest insight into the weathered world of the artist’s „falsified“ fantasies and his typical, complex, diverse and detailed filled paintings which are typical of Masker’s style.„With painting I try to get as close as possible to the drawing. It’s not easy. Parts of the torso or face even take me a week to do. I apply, peel areas and shade, everything takes a long time. I combine acrylic and brush surfaces, but also shaded areas of airbrush and spray. For contours, I more often use acrylic markers, developed by graffiti or linking brush-making companies,“ Masker describes his technique and process of work, which he continues to develop on the computer where he begins to play with color. „When I go home from my studio, I often look at my drawings on my phone or computer, and sometimes I find a detail that is in itself an image,“ he describes that precisely in this detail lies the magic of his local and international success of his work. In fact, it reminds you on the one hand of constantly generated immediate remarks, text records and small drawings, on the other hand, a series of unstoppable associations that often and many times connect contradictions of a remarkable whole. „In the latest paintings by Masker can be seen the effort of how to overcome the comic drawing form in relation to the linear literal narrative, as well as a certain reduction of the composition on one key theme (figure, head, sphere),“ points out Petr Vaňous, who talks about Masker’s work as „unreal imagery of landscapes or architecture,“ which captures the viewers’ attention also with its color.„In painting I am interested in how I can transfer a small sketch that is interesting and precise enough to a larger size and not lose its atmosphere,“ explains Masker, whose work still remains figurative and yet unprecedentedly complex. And with this vision from his small notebook he transfers these characters and scenes, by which he is fascinated, onto large canvases which can be seen on the current exhibition. Its main theme is the relationship between the world from and with the perspective of what is “real”. “A person actually does the same, only that he moves in time and that is why it is never the same. The circle in which one moves takes place in a spiral,” Masker explains another one of his motifs which he uses in his paintings.„Jakub was our first artist, who we represent exclusively. We therefore allow the artist to devote himself solely to his work. It is up to us to organize his exhibitions and art art fairs abroad, to address curators, but also to deal with the publication of catalogues or graphics“, concludes Petr Šec, partner of DSC Gallery.