Juli Mesa
Jan Matthews Bernárdez, Madrid 1989
Jan's work pays attention to small things, both from life in general and from nature in particular: insects, branches, remains of living beings, vegetables, ...
Jan's works combine painting with objects and visual games, trompe l'oeil. His painting is meticulous but not in a realistic way, but as if it were a dissection. He works with parsimony and patience, as if handling a scalpel, but at the same time he also asks the viewer to pay attention when looking, to stop for a moment to appreciate the detail.
Jan's long walks in the forest around Ungria have resulted in a series of found objects that he then transferred to his field notebook. A chance encounter with an insect, with the horn of a roe deer, with a piece of pottery, generates a story, a verse, or is recorded in oil. But that painting or that verse cannot be understood without the previous journey, without the search, without the magic of the instant of the encounter. Thus, the walks are as much a part of Jan's work as the final piece, if there is one. And the spectator, if he lets himself go, becomes not an observer, but a companion.
