Matej Fabian: Termovision

The first solo exhibition of Matej Fabian (*1979) in the Czech Republic at Kabinet T. in Zlín presents the work of this outstanding Slovak artist over the last two years. A fresh graduate of the Studio of Painting and Other Media under Professor Ivan Csudai at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, Fabian entered the art scene with a slight delay compared to his generational contemporaries. He spent his entire childhood and youth in downhill skiing and only discovered art for himself in early adulthood. Perhaps because of this, his expression is not jaded by over-cultivation, is not burdened by artistic clichés, and impresses with its vigour and ability to combine different influences in a spontaneous and fresh way. His work blends baroque monumentality with street-art aesthetics, black-metal iconography with biker iconography. This postmodern cocktail is unexpectedly coherent in Fabian's conception and formulates his unmistakable signature.

During his studies, Matej Fabian mastered classical painting approaches, which he transformed vividly into his own artistic language. The process of painting itself is essential for him, which he experiences with full physical commitment. He vehemently layers colours on top of each other in almost relief-like fragmentary layers, from which he models an illusory space.

The title of the exhibition, Termovision, is not only the title of the central image, but also a certain internal principle of Fabian's entire oeuvre, which makes visible phenomena and properties invisible to the naked eye. Thermovision is a terminus technicus for the visualization of thermal radiation of objects - whether animate or inanimate. We can assume that evil, as inflated negative energy, has a distinct thermal intensity that can be perceived and subsequently imaged under certain circumstances. It is precisely the mapping of evil that Matej Fabian systematically deals with. The line of this "research" began with the "American Devils" series, where he evoked his memories of a clash with the peculiar mythology of the local country community. His later "Austrian Devils" reflects on St. Nicholas celebrations in the Alps, which often turned from a folkloric custom into a frenzied hunt for tourists.

The theme of evil, this time elevated to the supernatural realm, culminated in Fabian's diploma series of paintings directly inspired by the cult 1980s sci-fi film Predator, from which two key canvases are presented in the exhibition at Cabinet T. The later painting, Jack, continues the film's visuality of Predator, only in a much more intimate realm: the artist replaces Jack Nicholson's frantic face from Shining with his self-portrait. Here, the personality has seeped through a borrowed identity - a mask - that was meant to guarantee his anonymity. It is the masks that absorb individuality, give vent to the animal components of the personality and release the frenzy in the heart. The transformations of the human mentality that Fabian is able to reveal with his "thermal vision" are also the subject of the paintings of beer pints, in which one can detect hints of the human face that - deformed by alcohol - dissolves in them.

The omnipresent evil, personified in folkloric costumes, demonic monsters or film characters, seems to emanate spontaneously in Fabian's paintings through the dense layers of colour, as if it pushed itself through the painter's medium somewhat independently of his will. With a bit of exaggeration, we can say that Fabian is a medium of our time - through his "thermal-vision" painting he depicts the invisible though omnipresent forces that control us, suggesting with a Lynchian sneer that things and people are not what they seem to be.

Terezie Zemánková