Master of Ceremony

Czech artist Jakub Hosek says his work is largely influenced by the post-punk music he listens to as he paints. It’s probably no coincidence then that his upcoming exhibition Ceremony shares a name with New Order’s debut single.

As well as Manchester-based miserabilists, Hosek also claims to be inspired stylistically by comic books, posters and street fashion – he runs art space AM 180 in Prague, which he says, ‘Acts as an inteface between the indie music scene and contemporary art’.

For his paintings Hosek uses what sounds like an incredibly laborious technique of applying acrylic paint to the canvas using meticulously hand-cut stencils – sometimes flowing on to the edges of the canvas or delivering a single image across several different supports.

The result is a highly graphic, cross-media body of work, with often sinister overtones.

Don’t Say Be Tender first, for example, looks like an organically grown Medieval weapon, rendered in wood and gold

Other works such as Roses & Mystery and Wig Master, while still using the stencil painting technique, seem much more illustrative in style – if no less unsettling.

Ceremony: Paintings by Jakub Hosek, runs at the Frameless Gallery, London EC1R, from 19-24 July.