Tomáš Predka
White Shadow
Artist
Tomáš Predka
(1986, Česká Lípa), Czech
Original Title
White Shadow
Date2022
Mediumoil and acrylic on canvas
Dimensions200 × 140 cm
Classificationspaintings
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
DescriptionTomáš Predka is a prominent figure of contemporary Czech painting. His abstract, technically precise paintings are always conceived in portrait orientation. They do not represent formal abstraction, instead clearly betraying a visual link with the world of digital culture as a source of new and constantly changing information. Predka sometimes further bolsters this effect using a line running parallel to the edges of the canvas, framing the pictorial scene, and thus evoking the surface of a digital screen. These paintings, which Predka has frequently referred to as “flashbacks”, can be understood as a reaction to the frantic perceptual snippets, flashes, and moments of a rapidly transforming reality. Consequently, his paintings have also incorporated elements of typography and fragments of reflective materials rid of any concrete meaning and used purely as an aesthetic stimulus and a residue of visible reality. Another clue for deciphering Predka’s work is his fascination with film and inspiration in the screening process, where individual frames are illuminated in rapid succession, with each image disappearing as quickly as it appeared. He usually conceives individual paintings as parts of a broader field of painting and meaning. Predka’s art can therefore be linked to the concept of expanded painting, where each work is part of a wider network of relations transcending the realm of painting. In his paintings, Predka places emphasis on colour, texture, and gesture, with scenes often rendered in a single tone of colour. These works, created using a combination of acrylic and oil paint (and recently also spray paint and airbrushes), are marked by technical precision resulting from a systematic creative process. His creative process is marked by deliberation and slow, wide, continuous brushstrokes with which he covers the canvas, and which produce a dematerialized, elusive, ephemeral, shrouded appearance, again evoking the Predka’s inspiration in the analogue and digital environments of film and the internet. Pastose strokes alternate with light glazes, subtle lyricism with austere coldness, organic fluidity with rigid geometric elements, cool tones with warmer colours. The titles of Predka’s paintings often reference transition, ambiguity, change, and states marked by physical and mental movement. His works can therefore be viewed as strangely elusive, transient fragments of the physical and the virtual worlds, conveying a reflection on the complicated, layered nature of present reality.
White Shadow (2022) belongs to a series of paintings created by removing layers of paint via carefully devised brush strokes which reveal the white primer layer. The layering of oil paint and the focused, almost calligraphic nature of the brush strokes create fluid, liquid forms through which Predka references Zygmunt Baumann’s concept of liquid modernity, which denotes the nature of contemporary society, permeated by different, individualized life patterns which need not follow a unified, normative order. This concept also underpinned the ambiguous title of the exhibition Prism, for which Predka painted the piece; this title was meant to allude to the conditions which shape the perspective from which we approach a given subject, as well as to the prism as an object used to refract light, breaking white light into its spectral colours. Both interpretations help us understand the author’s thought process, which understands each painting as a possible point of view, as one of myriad visual frequencies.
Tomáš Predka (born 1986, Česká Lípa) spent a year at the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, studying book binding and illustration, and subsequently proceeded to study graphic arts under Vladimír Kokolia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. During his studies, he also spent time at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, where he studied under Jiří Černický and Marek Meduna; this experience influenced Predka’s painterly transition to abstraction. In 2012, he spent time studying expanded painting under Daniel Richter at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna. He mainly exhibits his work at small, independent galleries, treating each exhibition as a unique conceptual and installational whole. Predka’s important solo exhibitions have included: Commands from the Ether, Galerie SPZ, Prague (2014); A Sleeping Cinema, Galerie NAU, Prague (2014); Peace Race /New Joerg, Vídeň (2015); Taste of Water/Berlin Model, Prague (2015); High Voltage, New Scene of the National Theatre in Prague (2016); Disruption, Critics’ Gallery, Prague (2017); Look At Me, Czech Centre in Paris (2017); Dopamine, Galerii 207, Prague (2018); Off Record, Holešovická šachta, Prague (2019); Prism, Pilsen Municipal Gallery, Pilsen (2022). In 2015, his work was selected for the prestigious open-call exhibition Contemporary Visions at BEERS London. In 2017, Predka won the 10th Critics’ Prize for Young Painting.
White Shadow (2022) belongs to a series of paintings created by removing layers of paint via carefully devised brush strokes which reveal the white primer layer. The layering of oil paint and the focused, almost calligraphic nature of the brush strokes create fluid, liquid forms through which Predka references Zygmunt Baumann’s concept of liquid modernity, which denotes the nature of contemporary society, permeated by different, individualized life patterns which need not follow a unified, normative order. This concept also underpinned the ambiguous title of the exhibition Prism, for which Predka painted the piece; this title was meant to allude to the conditions which shape the perspective from which we approach a given subject, as well as to the prism as an object used to refract light, breaking white light into its spectral colours. Both interpretations help us understand the author’s thought process, which understands each painting as a possible point of view, as one of myriad visual frequencies.
Tomáš Predka (born 1986, Česká Lípa) spent a year at the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, studying book binding and illustration, and subsequently proceeded to study graphic arts under Vladimír Kokolia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. During his studies, he also spent time at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, where he studied under Jiří Černický and Marek Meduna; this experience influenced Predka’s painterly transition to abstraction. In 2012, he spent time studying expanded painting under Daniel Richter at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna. He mainly exhibits his work at small, independent galleries, treating each exhibition as a unique conceptual and installational whole. Predka’s important solo exhibitions have included: Commands from the Ether, Galerie SPZ, Prague (2014); A Sleeping Cinema, Galerie NAU, Prague (2014); Peace Race /New Joerg, Vídeň (2015); Taste of Water/Berlin Model, Prague (2015); High Voltage, New Scene of the National Theatre in Prague (2016); Disruption, Critics’ Gallery, Prague (2017); Look At Me, Czech Centre in Paris (2017); Dopamine, Galerii 207, Prague (2018); Off Record, Holešovická šachta, Prague (2019); Prism, Pilsen Municipal Gallery, Pilsen (2022). In 2015, his work was selected for the prestigious open-call exhibition Contemporary Visions at BEERS London. In 2017, Predka won the 10th Critics’ Prize for Young Painting.
