Josef Karel

I had a nice and happy childhood. I excelled especially in art, otherwise I was an average student and often skipped school. In high school, alcohol was added to the mix... I started using marijuana heavily at the age of 15. A year later, collegeconsumption of the substance drove me to continuous hallucinations. These lasted, even sober, for the next three years. So I'm not schizophrenic,I probably owe it to some higher power. When I began to paint, I felt everything seeping to the surface. It's quite evident in my early works.My soul has been infested for a long time. I destroyed or burned dozens of paintings...Well, you see. I'd rather tell you about the first time I met the painter Josef Karl. It was four years after we met. In the beginning, I knew him only as an insider of contemporary animation and an enthusiastic filmmaker and photographer. At that timehe set out with his easel like a true barbizon to paint Bořeň, the distinctive mountain above Bílina, which had been painted and drawn by the greatest ofromantics Caspar David Friedrich and Johann Wolfgang Goethe, and after them dozens of other mathematicians up to Josef Karl, who originallythe hilarious lancet of a lion-shaped jumping rock so long refined, shaped and grounded heaven and earth, until I told him the"This isn't a Pine Tree anymore, you're not a landscaper at all!" Joseph asked what he was supposed to paint and the only possible answer followed,I said to her, "Look around, you'll find objects you like."Joseph looked around and picked out Fifi, the Fifi from that hilarious Four Leaf Clover (which I happen to collect), and painted her hangingand with her panties hanging down and a red stain (who was four years ahead of the Swedish artist Liv Strömquist, who with herpaintings on the Stockholm subway alerted astonished passengers to menstruation). But that was not the beginning of painting... Josef addedsays:Inspired by surrealism, I began to open the door to the subconscious and awaken the white canvas by depicting my feelings and dreams. Paintingsreflect my subconscious. They contain everything I have experienced, good and bad. Including the lines that often blur between these distinctions.These works are both an expression of my artistic expression and my unconscious reaction to the world.Excerpt from Josef Karel's catalogue, Text: Patrik Linhart