Jakub Matuška AKA Masker: Man of wondrous shapes

In Matuška's first extensive, large-format retrospective, the coming-of-age story of one of the most successful painters of his generation takes shape through more than a hundred paintings, as well as sketches, drawings and his own comments. From the beginnings of a graffiti writer at AVU and a baseball player in a white cube, through the lonely browsing of digital tools, to the defining holistic experience, parenthood and momentary active solitude, the technical, motivational and intellectual maturation and layered (self) portrait of the ironic/poetic glossator and his supremely distorted a handwriting that can draw from animated series as well as Renaissance masters. Along with the first fifteen years of painting, the book also culminates fifteen years of conversations with permanent collaborator Michal Nanoru, which in 2021 resulted in six months of intensive meetings in the studio and hours of recordings. Two lines of Matuška's speeches, in which the author's ability to informally aptly name is preserved, reveal the background of the selected paintings and point to more general themes such as Fluidity, Deformation, Light, Fear, Body and Nudity or Cows and Bulls. An omnipresent grotesque, a struggle with one's own ambition, a constant tension between the spontaneity of pen drawings and bright large-scale canvases, between iPad and acrylics, boyishness and calendar, modesty and messiahship, commitment and melancholy, dialectics and bipolarity, but above all passion for one's own medium, sensitivity to social the movements and persistent search for meaning emerge from the interlaced composition of commentary and work that quickly spread among collectors and may never find their way back.

The book features texts by Sasha Bogojeva (Juxtapoz magazine) and Jane Neal (co-authors of Art Cities of the Future: 21st Century Avant-Gardes)

Author: Michal Nanoru, texts by Saša Bogojeva and Jane Neal
Publisher: DSC Gallery
Release year: 2023
Czech language
Number of pages: 288 pages
Binding: paperback
Size: 252 x 340 mm
ISBN 978-80-7641-056-5