Karel Dicker (b. 1989) studies and researches all the possibilities of paint. It is like a playful exploration of techniques and materials.
A serious play, just as serious as this 5-year-old child, alone in the garden, maintaining a restaurant by himself, serving his friends the deers and the rabbits some imaginary meals. Just as serious as observing ants for hours along the bushes, studying the very important creatures, doing very important deliveries. Or just as serious as building dams in the rivers, maybe a little bit older already but still so serious because, “it is very important to see how water moves when I put this stone right there, you see?”
Karel paints by intuition, of all these factors eating his head, playing with his movements, acrobatic thoughts, and latest explorations. He builds himself his atmosphere, a very smoky atmosphere; putting himself in his bubble that we can see appearing on canvas, or wood, or sometimes other things... depending on his mood or recent discovery.
He’s got pins and needles in his hands. He can never stop because the world would keep on spinning, and he would then miss too many things to discover. It is not the fear of missing out, though. It is the immeasurable envy, the child-like urge to understand the un- understandable.
The main lines are often sudden spasms escaping from his attention like an intuitive splint flashing through him, of a form that he probably unconsciously collected into his memories some time ago. Then comes the conscious exploration studies: the three thousand million invisible layers of paint making the final colour, or making the movement, the depth, completing the magic.
Then he gets into a frenzy, framing his works because all this time of meditation surely drove him quite eccentric. And he starts, frenetically, to carve more and more, in the oddest spots with the oddest machines, the oddest shapes. Which, with some kind of bewitchment, end up accompanying and completing with harmony his drawn poems of one man’s drink patiently waiting on the side of the table, or one woman’s cigarette whose smoke glides silently in the air.