Jan Heres (1992) was born in the Swiss city of St. Gallen, currently lives and works in Prague. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, painting studio III / school led by Dr. Michael Rittstein. His work was also influenced by an internship in Jiří Sopek's studio and, last but not least, a one-year internship in the painting studio at the Indonesian Art Institute in Yogyakarta. It was there that Heres stepped away from capturing his immediate environment to exploring the local culture and began to uncovered mythology, along with features of religion, and he began to intermingle more timeline and varied space that are inherent in spiritual themes.
His paintings took on strong hues influenced by the light he perceived in a tropical setting. He painted in the open air, which in his case literally meant the jungle. The subject of his paintings then became the cultural environment and forms of which he painted, which he researched during his stay. Reincarnation and the intertwining of the present with the past, rituals, ceremonies - he preserved such themes on his canvases. He kept the titles of his paintings in the original language in order to preserve the integrity of the culture he depicted. The distinctive stylization of figures or the aesthetics of Javanese masks or wayang shadow puppets contrasted Heres's previous creative stage of civilian portraits and scenes from the family environment, with which he completed his studies at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts in 2017. Man and his relationship with other people, emotional experiences - this was then the central theme of Heres' paintings. (cont.)
Artworks
Jan Heres’ works are available at THINK+feel Contemporary. If you have any questions about any of these artworks, do not hesitate to contact us.