The Landscape With Its Own Principles

Ján Pečarka’s Organica paintings offer an alluring view into another, better world

Ján Pečarka, who earned his MFA at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia and subsequently at New York Academy of Art, is one of the mid-career contemporary Slovak artists living and working abroad. Based in New York City, he has shown his artwork in both the US and Europe and most recently in solo exhibitions at Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art in Medzilaborce, Slovakia (2019) and at Sonia Gechtoff Gallery – National Academy Museum & School, NYC (2017). Educated and trained as a figurative painter, Pečarka has been often experimenting with different types of media and techniques, including animation and rendering. His dark portraits of notoriously famous politicians created with his own special scratchboard technique drew huge attention: in these psychological portraits of smiling or frowning politicians the artist questions the power and charisma of public figures, and he is doing so with a good knowledge of people’s emotions. His earlier series, Metamorphosis, reflected the human condition – a condition of an utmost vulnerable individual trying to understand his very existence. Indeed, a human being and a human life per se have always been in the centre of his attention, be it an everyday person or a national leader.

Organica

Lately, Pečarka has turned to purely organic paintings. His newest series, Organica (2020–ongoing), exposes a hidden world of micro organic structures. ”It is playfulness and fluidity of life in its micro organic form,” Pečarka explains and adds: “There is another universe inside of us that has its own rules, and continues working no matter if we want it or not. It is life as such. And I find it fascinating.”

Organic structures and nature itself have always had a big impact on artists of all disciplines. Organic art is essential and vital, and requires a certain amount of insight and emotion. Indeed, Pečarka creates his newest paintings with a high “organic sensibility.” The conception of a harmonious organic sensibility is “the aim of a right relation between Man and Nature, between unconscious and conscious mind, between will and spontaneity, between childhood and manhood.” 

Pečarka’s art has always reflected his personal story and his personal experience, which is the case with the Organica series as well: “My artwork is developing according to what I’m going through at any given moment. I consider myself a visual artist who is sensitive to changes. I reflect on what is going on around me. When my son was born, it was a big euphoria. I was in the delivery room watching his birth, and suddenly I saw things differently. This little human was screaming, and, at the same time, he was still connected to his mom by the umbilical cord. Everything was colorful and very shiny. He was purple and rose, and the cord was cerulean green. What an unbelievable explosion of life! My son was screaming out loud, and there was something in him which gave him the strength to survive.“

This experience of the new “fresh” life that wants to live, this pure unlimited energy and strength are the main sources for his current artwork. And color plays a big role in it: “Life is very colorful. Something which is new and growing is also blooming with colors. I am trying to apply the same logic when approaching my current artwork. I think even the palette of bright colors I use now is not colorful enough to reveal what is going on out there, this move and pressure, this pulsation in space-time, this flux… It is the reflection of an immediate existence,” the artist explains.

Our “immediate existence,” however, has been disrupted profoundly by the covid-19 pandemic. Pečarka admits that even the time of covid has eventually become his source of inspiration. Not being able to visit his Long Island City studio during lockdown, he started to experiment with different computer techniques, such as computer simulation, animation, and renderings. He asserts: “Virtual reality has become a new landscape for me, a landscape to discover, to adore and to pause.” Moreover, with the actual threat of the coronavirus – this invisible enemy – he started being more interested in what was going on inside our bodies, how it all works “below the surface”, and his interest in this rather mysterious microcosmos is reflected in his new paintings. Hence, this unprecedented and highly challenging time brought him closer to the world of science.

At the intersection of art and science

Both art and science fundamentally perceive what exists around us, and both disciplines are more closely related than one may think: the art is largely based on science and, at the same time, a great deal of creative thinking is vital for new scientific discoveries. Pečarka explains his approach to science as follows: “I’m more interested in biology and science itself now. I’m trying to understand things as an artist because I’m not a scientist. Nevertheless, science is an universal, global language, and science and art will crossfade more often in the future, I think. We should follow the science since it transcends the boundaries. It goes beyond our limitations and gives us answers to many things. It can open our eyes to see another, better world which is different, yet makes sense. This world is purer, free of stereotypes.” Pečarka has been following scientists and authors, from famous figures like Stephen Hawking and Bill Bryson to astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson or philosopher Yuval Noah Harari. Their insights give him space for thinking and re-thinking things, and subsequently reflecting on it in his own artwork.

Pečarka’s Organica paintings are imminent and authentic, bright and joyful, while exploring something very fundamental – the most powerful life on earth. They uncover this delicate micro-world which is all around us and within us. Ján Pečarka would like to make us think more deeply and understand that we are part of this world too. He wants us to cross the reality and enter with a bright new view, to accept the imagination of his art and apply it to ourselves. Unlike some biologists turned painters who paint watercolors of microorganisms and cells with exacting scientific specifications, Pečarka’s work is more driven by pure imagination and immediateness. It is about the miraculous phenomenon of life itself and its complex dynamics. There is no composition or perspective, no definition of space and light in his spectacular paintings. The artist states: “It is not an empty space though, it is the universe.” And concludes: “It is the landscape with its own principles.”

Text by Monika Hankova