Jan Valik
Jan Valik holds his MA in Fine Arts from Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and MA in Painting from the Royal College of Arts in London. He was awarded a VUB Foundation Painting Prize 2016 in Slovakia, was shortlisted for the Contemporary British Painting Prize 2021 and The Morrison&Foerster Art Prize 2023 in London. Valik has participated in Artist-in-Residence Programs at BankART in Yokohama, Japan; Mark Rothko Art Center in Latvia; and most recently at Megafield Reisdency in Beijing and Studio West in London. His work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions in Belgium, Austria, Slovakia, Czechia and Japan, as well as in group exhibitions in the UK and across Europe (Belgium, Germany, Austria, Czechia, Slovakia, Latvia, France and Ireland), in China and Japan.
Selected Works
Forest Mind IV, 60 x 50 cm, oil on linen
Forest Mind III, 60 x 50 cm, oil on linen
Forest Mind, 130 x 100 cm, oil on linen
Forest Mind II, 60 x 50 cm, oil on linen
Levity Portal, 60 x 50 cm, oil on linen
Work Available
Invisible Connections 4
Invisible Connections 1
Invisible Connections 16
Arthoods Review
Within Jan Valik’s paintings exists a world suspended between emergence and disappearance. Colour, gesture, and atmosphere move continuously across the surface, creating a state that feels both emotionally charged and deeply immersive.
Rather than relying on fixed imagery, the works unfold slowly through sensation and movement. Certain forms emerge only to dissolve again, while translucent layers of colour drift and overlap like traces of memory, light, or emotions that are difficult to fully grasp. The paintings carry a strong sense of life, as though the surface itself is still shifting, searching, and becoming.
Valik’s use of colour is especially delicate and dreamlike. The transitions between warm and cool tones, the subtle control of light and transparency, and the almost surreal combinations of colour create an atmosphere that feels emotionally intimate yet visually expansive. Standing in front of the works brings back the feeling of first watching The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as a child, when an ordinary wardrobe suddenly opens into another world filled with silence, mystery, and imagination. Reality begins to soften, and viewers are gradually drawn into spaces suspended somewhere between memory, fantasy, and emotion.
Perhaps what feels most compelling within the practice is its refusal to settle into certainty. The paintings do not rush to explain themselves, but instead remain open, fluid, and instinctive, inviting viewers to enter through atmosphere and feeling rather than logic or fixed meaning.
Perhaps what the works ultimately reveal is not another fantasy world entirely, but a forgotten sensitivity within ourselves that reality has gradually taught us to ignore.
Presented by Arthoods.
Artist Statement
A believer in the ephemeral, Jan Valik describes his paintings as fluid territories and thresholds – between space and atmosphere, land and memory, conjured through sensation, emotion, and immersion in the medium. Painting, as both process and result, is that threshold – the potentiality of space where layers, marks, and brushwork emerge as an ecosystem of its own, a space of dialogue between the ephemeral and the everlasting. Essentially rooted in traditions of both abstract and landscape painting and drawing life-long inspiration from both Eastern and Western philosophies and their respective insights into the nature of perception, Jan explores painting’s potential as a ecosystem of meanings, marks and sensations to arrive at a specific ambiguity sitting between state of mind and nature of the medium. True to the painting’s alchemical spirit and principles, the idea of transformation of the intangible into visual and conjured, his paintings traverse the interplay between external environments and internal feelings, creating fluid, evoked spaces and sensed atmospheres emerging from the essence of the medium.
Solo exhibitions
2025 Amart Gallery, ‘The Calling’, Vienna, Austria
2024 Suju Gallery, ‘Forest’, Karuizawa, Japan
2023 Amart Gallery, ‘Small Infinities’, Vienna, Austria
2022 L.L. Contemporary, ‘Breakthrough’, Toronto, Canada
2022 Husk Gallery, ‘Shifting Places’, Brussels, Belgium 2021 Amart Gallery, ‘Landscapes’ Vienna, Austria
2020 Husk Gallery, ‘Verge’, Brussels, Belgium
2019 Cin Cin Gallery, ‘Seeing Triple’, Bratislava, Slovakia
2018 Chisou, ‘Inner Weather’, Komono, Japan
2017 Niche Gallery, ‘Plethora and the Quiet World’, Tokyo, Japan
Selected group exhibitions
2026 Florence Trust, ‘Weight in Translation’, London, UK
2026 Hypha HQ, ‘Immemorial’, London, UK
2026 Elias Tsiofas Gallery, ‘Unsacred Terrains’, Thessaloniki, GR
2026 Nedbalka Gallery, ‘Generation XYZ’ , Bratislava, SK 2025 Yorkshire Sculpture Park, ‘Unquiet Landscape’, Sheffield, UK
2025 Xima Gallery, ‘Beyond the Castle’, Hangzhou, CN
2024 Norito Gallery, ‘Moving Stones Gather No Moss’, London, UK
2024. L.L. Contemporary, ‘Both: Inwards and Out There’, Toronto, CA
2024 NoHo Gallery, ‘Hazy Horizons’, London, UK 2024 Amart Gallery, 'Abstract on Paper', Vienna, AT
2024 Terrace Gallery, 'Nudge It', London, UK 2024 The Bhavan, 'Transient Traces', London, UK
2023. L.L.Contemporary, 'Sunshine and Rain', Toronto, CA
2023 Adah Rose Gallery, 'Carte Blanche', Washington D.C., US
2023 Pragovka Gallery, 'Echo of the Depth in Space', Prague, CZ
2022 Studio West Gallery, 'Now Introducing', London, UK
2022. London Paint Club x Hoxton253, 'Select Pt.1', London, UK
2022 Abstract on Paper, Amart Gallery, Vienna, AT 2022 Unit 1 Gallery, 'Contemporary British Painting Prize 2021', London, UK
2021 Huddersfield Art Gallery, 'Contemporary British Painting Prize 2021', Huddersfield, UK
2021. FiveSparks Arts Centre, 'Mediated Landscapes', Harvard, US
2021 Husk Gallery, 'Panta Rhei', Brussels, BE
2020 Husk Gallery, 'In Arcadia', Brussels, BE
2019 Amart Gallery,'Extension of Reality', Vienna, AT
2019 Medium Gallery, 'Night Walk, Day Sleep', Bratislava, SK
2019 Niche Gallery, 'Room with a View', Tokyo, JP
2019 Star Art Space at Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, 'Muster Actions', Chongqing, CN
2018 Nedbalka Gallery, ‘Painting Year', Bratislava, SK
Awards
2023 Rose Finn-Kelcey Bursary & The Vice Chancellor’s Achievement Scholarship
2023 Shortlist, The Morrison and Foerster Art Prize, London, UK
2022 Shortlist, Now Introducing Prize 2022, London, UK
2021 Shortlist, Contemporary British Painting Prize 2021, London, UK
2016 Painting Prize 2016, VUB Bank Foundation, SK
2015 Shortlist, Painting 2015, VUB Bank Foundation, SK
Education
2023 – 2024 MA Painting, Royal College of Arts, London, UK
2020 – 2022 Turps Banana Studio Programme, London, UK
2007 – 2012 MA in Fine Arts, Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Czechia
Residencies
2025 Megafield Gallery, Beijing, CN
2024 Studio West, London, UK
2019 Megafield Gallery, Beijing, CN
2018 Banska St a nica Contemporary, Banska Stiavnica, SK
2018 Egon Schiele Art Centre, Cesky Krumlov, CZ
2016 BankART Studio NYK, Yokohama, JP