Jan Vytiska’s paintings follow in the specific tradition of contemporary Czech popsurrealist painting. Working with a street-art aesthetic and applying a precise painterly technique, Vytiska takes pop culture, significantly updated using elements of rural mythology and folklore, and shifts it into the realm of fantasy. It is almost as if the fictitious anthropomorphic ghouls in his works had emerged from the naïve dreamworlds of ancient societies. Be that as it may, the aesthetic of his eerie surreal stories, with their violence and many horror scenes, is more reminiscent of contemporary animated films for grownups. The visions presented here remain uncompromisingly unreal.
Mira Keratová