Presenting:
484, Jakub Jochym, 1’46”, 2017
Alan Grillo has composed an essay about Jakub’s artworks with his comprehension and analysis.
The Last Flaneurs
Many graffiti writers decide to live a very individual lifestyle, at the price of perpetually breaking the law and living at the edges of society.The urge to produce work around urban environments, railway tracks or on trains, reinforces piece by piece their fictional but real new identity.This path of discovery drives writers to constantly seek for new territories to apply their letters and colors. The city becomes an endless playground to explore and exploit every corner. Many of those that could result inexistent or invisible to most common people. Archiving as a way of picturing time, a witness of the times that has been with all the passions, emotions and struggles, which goes beyond the way that the digital world is bringing us most of us to.
Alchemy of the Self
One very underrated aspect of graffiti, is the constant and massive effort of writers to create a new individuality around a name that they have chosen for themselves, their tag. Getting your tag is like an initiation, the start of a new journey and exploration of all the shades of one’s existence. Producing and self-promoting art through an avatar, a projection of you with aspects that are not being expressed in your current personality, is to close the circle of experiences. An Alchemical journey to discover all possible manifestations of the self (you) reflected in the world. Being a young man moving into a new homeland that is as vast as the Chinese borders reach, Jakub deliberately decided to take the “heroic” path of exploring his new territories in a more adventurous way than his fellow expats. Having lived in Hefei and Nanjing, Jochym’s attitude is to immerge himself into the new landscapes deeply into the details to connect deeply with it.
The Mind Behind Words
Words are our first tool we choose to work as interaction of ourselves with the outside world and our surroundings.Language is a powerful tool, a programming structure that has a double side though: we own words to work on our thoughts and express them, but on the other side if you see language as a given structure, it is very uncommon to see foreigners involving their practice with the pictorials of the endless system of Chinese characters.Jakub not only takes this challenge, but even brings it to the next level at applying it to graffiti and to one of its most primordial forms, the “bubble throw up”, a quick way to design letters, in this case, characters exploiting the language to an individual use is a powerful and creative artistic practice.
About Artist
The work of Jakub Jochym, born in 1990 in Slovakia Republic, ranges between graffiti, videos and drawings employing acrylics, charcoal, ink, pencil and pastel. Being based in China for the last 6 years, he studied Sinology, and Chinese has been his primary language on a daily basis for communication, becoming thus a part of his identity, not only when it comes to artistic practice.
His work is deeply rooted in graffiti, a spontaneous artistic movement that has influenced the youth of the so called millennial generation, starting in New York in the late 60’s and flourishing massively in the 90’s all around Europe together with the Hip Hop movement. Under this influence, Jochym spends most of his research time on long walks and bike rides through the city, observing details and picking up found objects that will become the subjects of his artwork.
Art Events
2014 Art in Red Light – Art Fair, Amsterdam, Holland
2015 Vice – Night of the Unknowns – Factory 54, Shanghai, China
2015 Open Borders – Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Art – Nanjing, China
Exhibitions
2013 The Exhibition of Contemporary Art and Design – Hefei, China
2014 The First Independent Chinese Art Exhibition – Hefei, China
2014 The Art Exhibition of Contemporary Youth – Nanjing, China
2014 Awkward Existence – Solo Exhibition, The White Society Gallery – Wuhan, China
2016 A Serious Matter – Group Exhibition, Vacuum Gallery – Beijing, China
