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My immediate environment has always provided the impetus for my art practice, a snapshot view of the world, something to work with, or more often than not, kick against. For a period of six years I lived in Amsterdam, Berlin, Lisbon, and Prague, absorbing what I could from each environment and culture I found myself in. My paintings at the time reflected this eclectic mix of influences, and I adopted a direct, urban, almost punk approach to making work. Since settling back in London eight years ago on the Kingsland Road in Hackney, my working practice has undergone a slow but deliberate change. |
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Karl Bielik
Karl Bielik, Fall, 2008. Oil on canvas, 36 x 46 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
My immediate environment has always provided the impetus for my art practice, a snapshot view of the world, something to work with, or more often than not, kick against. For a period of six years I lived in Amsterdam, Berlin, Lisbon, and Prague, absorbing what I could from each environment and culture I found myself in. My paintings at the time reflected this eclectic mix of influences, and I adopted a direct, urban, almost punk approach to making work.
Since settling back in London eight years ago on the Kingsland Road in Hackney, my working practice has undergone a slow but deliberate change. The earlier large-scale works, using brash combinations of found materials and industrial paints have gradually given way to more knowing and intimately scaled pieces, calculated mark making, and a more sophisticated use of color.
The common thread linking the different bodies of work is an interest in the disregarded, overlooked, and abandoned. Most recently I have started using literal photographs of my environment as the starting point for paintings, and the things I find myself responding to are more local: a stain made on a wall by a leaking drain pipe, details from a decaying shop facade, a dribble of paint from some long lost painting on the studio wall.
Working from photographs forces me to approach the canvas with a different set of eyes, to move away from my comfort zone, and to deal with imagery that I had previously not considered. The paintings are increasingly spare, and in many cases they are “one-shot paintings,” done in a single sitting. This said, there are no steadfast parameters to my process. I am often working on as many as 20 different paintings at any one time, so inevitably there is a cross-fertilization of ideas from one to another. I prefer to let the paintings dictate the direction they need to go, rather than restricting myself with arbitrary rules.
My projects maintain my interest in using location as a spur for making work. I run Terrace, an artists’ studio complex in Hackney, and I curated an outdoor show on wasteland adjoining the site. The show Never were there so many dead flowers, so much wasted time featured the work of over 40 artists, and was on view on August 30 only. The works produced for the show remained in the space to decay. My band, Lark, played at the event, followed by a performance at the Royal Academy of Arts in November, which coincides with the release of our first album on the Care in the Community label. I also have a solo show planned for later this year in a gallery in Budapest. I plan to make all the work in the month prior to the show, “finding” the works (initially with my camera) on the car journey there and then in the city itself.
