19 Apr 2018

Jakub Tomáš: Liquidity

Nevan Contempo

Reviewed by William Corwin

Jakub Tomáš has fashioned a painterly palimpsest that considers the old-fashioned subjects of composition and narrative. By the Lake (2018) wends its way from Manet (particularly Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe) to Ensor and Salle to Schutz, all in one painting, crafting softly realistic, figure-heavy scenes based on real-world arrangements of cut-outs and masks.

Tomáš occupies a marvelous perch from which to consider scale and the third dimension in painting, as in the blue-hued, fraught dollhouse of Tired Revolutionaries/Substantial Exchange (2018), in which the artist adds DeChirico and Hockney to the mix. A pissing man on a terrace in the picture forces a link to sculptures inhabiting the gallery, wireframe faces and figures made of plastic tubes filled with color pumped from buckets. The sculptures physically resemble the denizens of the canvasses, but the monochromatic color flows come from a different place. Maybe bringing in Bruce Nauman included one too many for this party.