Hypernaturalism
Vilém Balej and Ryan O'Rourke

Hypernaturalism is a form of painting based on sensory knowledge. Its founders are Vilém Balej and Ryan O’Rourke, who attended the atelier of Vladimir Kokolia at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts. They are both regarded as legends of the atelier. Kateřina Šeda once said to Vilém that he is to paint as if he was burping and since then he hasn’t painted otherwise. The compluter devil Ryan loosely curises between old and new media and between computer codes. His characters and landscapes are fluid and volatile, presenting themselves in a reverse mode of sorts. Portraits, acts, genre sceneries, urban landscapes and religious motifs of Vilém Balej are no longer the imitation of the existing, but rather the reconstruction. Painting is not a reflection of reality, it is built on a grid of modernity of Mondrian and Malevič. It creates a different world that looks much more accurate and exact than ours.

Martina Vítková