‘Thank You For Looking At Me’ presents the culmination of an eight year process for the Czech artist Hynek Martinec. Since 2015 Martinec’s painting Thank You For Looking At Me has been in a meditative state - isolated and exposed to the elements on a cabin in remote Iceland. In Martinec’s own words he felt ‘that the painting needed to have extra space’ before it was exhibited. Now, seven years later, with the markings of nature, rain, wind and the changing seasons, the painting is exhibited at OHSH Projects alongside a documentary film piece.
Martinec also presents an ambitious mural alongside a collection of vanitas paintings. The mural of charcoal drawings reference a travel book from the 1840s, Voyage en Islande et au Groenland, by Paul Gaimard, a French surgeon and explorer. Martinec came across the book at the home of Icelandic friends around the time he embarked on ‘Thank You For Looking At Me’. To close the project, it felt fitting to create a mural inspired by the book.
OHSH Projects have exhibited Martinec twice before; in ‘Still Life / Life Still’ (2022) and ‘ABSURD’ (2022). For further information please click here.
Installation images: Ben Deakin, courtesy of OHSH Projects.
Hynek Martinec (b.1980, Broumov, Czech Republic) lives and works in London and has exhibited extensively internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include Parafin, London (2021, 2017, 2014), ‘Voyage to Iceland’, National Gallery, Prague (2018), Galerie Dum, Broumov (2018), ‘Hybrid’, The Factory, London (2016) and ‘Intellectual Properties’, Vaclav Spala Gallery, Prague (2015). Important recent group exhibitions include ‘Vanitas’, DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague (2021), ‘The Will To Power’, ASC Gallery, London, (2021), ‘Inspiration – Iconic Works’, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (2019) and Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki (2020), ‘Fascination with Reality’, Olomouc Museum of Modern Art (2017), John Moores Painting Prize, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2014), ‘Beyond Reality: British Painting Today’, Galerie Rudolfinium, Prague (2012) and the Prague Biennial (2009). Martinec’s work is in private collections internationally and in public collections including the National Gallery, Prague and the British Museum, London.
