OHSH Projects is delighted to present Boccaccio’s Dream by Miroslav Pomichal, our first solo presentation of the artist after exhibiting his work in Holy Grail (2021), God of War (2023), and Neo-Gothic (2023) at OHSH Central;  ARES (2023) at Cromwell Place; and Checkmate (2023) at OHSH South, and in a solo presentation at the British Art Fair 2023.

In the words of the artist... These paintings have their real origin in the summer of 2022, when I developed the visual language of bursting skies. They do not signify any one thing in particular, at times evoking flowers, fireworks, heavenly bodies, or violent explosions. It was an instinctive response to the rural summers in Slovakia, but altered by the war in neighbouring Ukraine. So the skies have very attractive as well as repulsive aspects, and they vie for the viewer’s attention. 

I developed this theme as the months went by, particularly for the Neo-Gothic exhibition at OHSH Projects, where I enclosed these skies in a framework of cramped, medieval windows. Medieval ruins have been a constant subject for me in the past several years, with their flesh-like physical solidity becoming failed beacons of spiritual yearnings, so in some ways it was a natural combination. The resulting effect intrigued me, because it contained the visual intensity of the bursting skies, shrunk its area, yet somehow enhanced its power. It creates a titillating distance between the viewer, but also offers them protection, however unsuitable for actual living.  It made me think of Bocaccio’s Decameron, where the Black Death ravages the cities, and a group of noble youths escape to a countryside castle to while away their time telling tales. The plague has obvious pandemic connotations - but there are perhaps more insidious symptoms of the mental chaos and turbulence of values which also fit into this metaphor.  The Gothic chamber is the crumbling and cold, yet safe and protective, interior through which the human soul peers out into the sublime spectacle of the world.

MIROSLAV POMICHAL (b.1984, Slovakia) lives and works in London and Sherborne, Dorset, where he teaches art history. Miroslav’s work is distinguished by a sculptural treatment of the picture plane. His paintings depict emblematic symbols, landscape, urban vignettes, and scenes of conflict in which black lines crisscross the surface of each picture, allowing a sense of disruptive narrative. Abstraction is interspersed with the use of myopic symbolism, a trope of Expressionist painting concerned with the issues and tragedies of modern life, and particularly the tragedies of war. The monumentally concrete armature of the legacy of Expressionism is punctuated dramatically by a sense of dramatic storytelling and a commitment to the spiritual side of humankind as well.