When German painter Bernard Lokai saw images of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he was immediately reminded of his family’s escape from Czechoslovakia in the 1960s. He responded with a series of abstract, deeply felt paintings that explore the connections between his own past and the immediacy and emotion of global political events.
Lokai’s work uses the historical vernacular of painting—including the active brushstrokes of abstract expressionism and the spray paint of graffiti—to simultaneously absorb and disrupt traditions of landscape and abstraction. In this new work, Lokaise addresses his own experiences as a refugee with bold, gestural notes and strategically positioned negative space. Lokai often combines multiple techniques within a single work, leaving parts of the canvas blank around the movement and impact of the central forms, and using every tool at his disposal, from splattered neon acrylic to thickly applied brushstrokes in oil.
Lokai’s new work expresses a direct emotion about a specific event and departs from earlier, more studied paintings “about painting.” While his practice continually explores the traditions and tropes of the genre, these new compositions bring the history and legacy of painting into an urgent present.
Bernard Lokai was born in Bohumin, Czechoslovakia, in 1960. After fleeing the former Czechoslovakia, Lokai grew up in Duren. He studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under Gerhard Richter and now lives in Düsseldorf and Berlin.