This open studio is a closing event of the artist's residency at Cité international des arts.
The current series which Ján Vasilko decided to develop could be assimilated to the abstract painters, or suprematists of the 1950s and 1960s, who share the same pure fascination with lines, shapes and their possibilities.
To an unbiased observer, the abstract paintings of Ján Vasilko often evoke maps, natural motives, or even the colourful lines of a television monoscope. However, the artist does not seek to derive any clear-cut forms whatsoever: I work with lines and occupy myself with the spaces in between them.
At the centre of Ján Vasilko’s interest is a line as a fundamental form, an ultimate limit to all shapes. He observes the lines’ nature and their possibilities as he puts them together in groups, clusters, and structures. Intentionally and naturally occurring breaks between the lines are deemed equally important, as they bring rhythm into the abstract compositions.
However, Ján Vasilko strictly refuses that his paintings could be an artistic rendition of a musical score, yet he is not opposed to the idea of the process of their creation being very similar to that of a musical composition. Just like a composer, the artist takes abstract tones and organises them into formations that gain cadence through well-timed pauses.
The artist describes the process as “painting with adventure”, or an improvisation on an imagined form, in which accidents play a significant role. As a result, the works of his “geometric psychological automatism” reach a new borderline of abstraction.
Ján Vasilko (Slovakia) is in residence at the Cité internationale des arts through the programme of the Union of Visual Artists of Slovakia.