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CEREMONY,2007, acrylic on canvas, 120x124x20cm JAKUB HOSEK(b.1979) draws upon a wide range of influences and inspiration, both contemporary and historical when constructing his paintings. Made using acrylic paint on canvas, applied meticulously using hand cut stencils, Ho..ek’s paintings have been described as being illustrative appearing to describe a complex narrative in a single-frame comic-strip-like frame.Hosek’s paintings are at once playful and grotesque, recalling, from art history, the works of the painter Philip Guston. Philip Guston (1913–1980) was a leading figure amongst the American Abstract Expressionist painters of the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1960s he shocked audiences by reverting to figurative painting. Guston used cartoon-like imagery to depict, for example, the Ku Klux Klan, as a metaphor for bleak political and social situations in the United States at that time. Of abstract painting Guston wrote: ‘There is something ridiculous and miserly in the myth we inherit from abstract art — that painting is autonomous, pure in itself... But painting is “impure”. It is the adjustment of impurities which forces painting’s continuity. We are image-makers and image-ridden.’Jakob Ho..ek’s paintings are filled with such ‘impurities’. They recall something of the works of numerous illustrators. For example George Herriman’s seminal ‘Krazy Kat’ comic. Some of the forms and colours used by Ho..ek can be seen to find their visual roots in the arid desert environment populated by Krazy Kat, Ignatz Mouse and Offissa Pupp - characters first created in 1913 and published in Randolph Hearst’s newspapers across the United States until the mid-1940s. Herriman’s depiction of a bizarre love triangle between a cat, mouse and dog combine chaos, humour, violence and pathos within a primary and pastel coloured characature of Coconino County, Arizona. A recent magazine article by Tomá.. Pospiszyl compared Ho..ek’s paintings to illustrators of the 1950’s such as Jim Flora (1914 – 1998). Pospiszyl describes such illustrators as modernist, adapting avant-garde artistic movements such as Cubism and Surrealism for mass markets. He says of them in relation to the situation in the Czech Republic: ‘Today the fifties are modern and old fashioned at the same time. They can bring back nostalgia for modernity, after naïve technological optimism… from the anonylous monuments of the Soviet Sputniks in remote Czech towns and villages… artistic strategies based upon the evocation of a “modern past” have … appeared in the Czech art of the nineties – an environment sensitive to the collapse of modern utopias’.This said, Ho..ek’s pictorial references are not drawn from specific sources although texts incorporated within his painting are. These are also adopted as titles such as: ‘It Takes a Million Years to Become Diamonds So Let's Burn like Coal until the Sky is Black’ (2004) and ‘The Half–Eaten Sausage Would Like To See You In His Office’ (2005). Darkly humorous, these phrases compliment Ho..ek’s comic book vocabulary. They are drawn from the music that he listens to – predominantly contemporary post and punk-rock. These particular titles, for example are titles of songs by the bands Storm and Stress (from 2000) and The Locust (from 2003).Together with Dan Dudarec, Marketa Willemsa Peckova, Stepan Bolf and his sister Anezka Hoskova, Ho..ek is also a Director of A.M.180 an independent creative collective based upon ‘DIY principles and punk ethics’. Since September 2003 A.M.180 has been running a space in Prague which is a platform for and interface between the independent music scene and contemporary art. A.M.180 hosts exhibitions, live shows and performances. Ho..ek’s interest and involvement in contemporary music has also led him to design record covers for the bands Naquei Manou and L..Point. Ho..ek is workihg in a recent tradicion of such interventions following prominent Los Angeles based artists Mike Kelly and Raymond Pettibon who have designed record sleeves and fliers for bands such as Sonic Youth and Black Flag. Ho..ek also presents a weekly radio show for Prague’s Radio1 station. (Text by Rob Tufnell, Curator of Turner Contemporary)NEW PAINTINGS(all 2007): Sawdust and diamonds,2007 Nikole Elikolani Prescovia Scherzinger,2007PAINTINGS,2005: Sleep, eat food, have visions, 2005,Acrylic on canvas,145x120x7cm I don..t believe in the sun,2005,Acrylic on canvas,135x200x8cm The half-eaten sausage would like to see you in his office,2005,125x110x10cm Hey, not all guys are assholes, 2005, Acrylic on canvas, 130x200x12cm