MAGMA gallery is glad to present "Atomic Bubble", the second solo show by Jan Kaláb, from 30 November 2019 to 26 January 2020.
In fact, after the success of 2017, the gallery spaces will once again welcome the work of one of the biggest names in worldwide’s urban abstraction.
All the exhibited works were made specifically for this show. Among these, the public could appreciate both a careful selection of pictorial works, among which "Atomic Bubble Blue", icon of the exhibition and already considered by many enthusiasts as an important turning point for the style of Kaláb, and the great sculpture " Honour to Brancusi ”, in perfect balance between the elegance of the forms and the pop language. In the other pictorial compositions exhibited, it will be possible to appreciate, at a level that is perhaps still unpublished due to control and maturity, the typical characteristics of his style, or the dynamism of shapes that remembers cells, drops or planets, the hypnotic chromatic fluidity and the wise capable shades to create a perceptive illusion of three-dimensionality.
As you can see in the important monograph "Point of Space", published in collaboration with MAGMA gallery in 2018, and also available at the MAMBO bookstore in Bologna, his pictorial research started in the 1990s in Prague, immediately breaking the greyness of the iron curtain through urban pictorial interventions with the brightest colors, used in the streets, on the asphalt, as a claim to a different world, of a strong and irreverent "I", also through the first sculptures, similar to pigeons, which surprise and observe passers-by from the most remote corners. This is street art initially for Kalab. Over the years his style will be refined, going through writing and installations of enormous dimensions getting an interest in increasingly circular pictorial forms, almost like letters that blend together and give off strength, friction and energy in doing so. From this simple and effective intuition, another phase of his research begins. A pictorial energy that over time will modify the shapes and frames before perfectly circular, bending them, breaking them down, thus creating compositions like the ones you can see in the exhibition, perfect and mature examples of this great artist.
In 2018, the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Gardens in Florida dedicated a retrospective to him entitled "Soul of Graffiti", with a focus on sculpture. In 2017 in Krakow, Poland, his works are exhibited through the public project Abstract Forum, along with those of other big names such as Nelio, the Italian Moneyless and Remi Rough among others, offering the public a broad look at the current evolution of abstract urban art. In the same year MAGMA gallery presents his first solo show in Italy, entitled "Zooom". In 2015 he exhibited at the MAXXI in Rome, Italy, participating in the group show "Et Cetera", an exhibition dedicated to contemporary communist post-regime Czechoslovakian art. In 2011, after taking part in the first "Biennal de Graffiti Fine Art" at the MUBE Museum in São Paulo, Brazil, he exhibited at the MASP museum in the same city.
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