Hynek Martinec: Every Minute You Are Closer to Death, Parafin Gallery

Opening in Parafin’s new space just shy of Oxford Street, Hynek Martinec’s ‘Every Minute You Are Closer to Death’ presents a bold shake up of often-perceived stagnant hyperrealist work. Frequently straightforward commonplace items, these artfully arranged still lives bring banal objects together in unusual combinations to great visual effect.
An artist with a rightfully growing international reputation, Martinec is currently exhibiting as part of this year’s John Moores Painting Prize and has previously garnered accolades at multiple BP Portrait Awards. At Parafin, his large-scale monochrome paintings sensitively breathe new life into the ‘vanitas’ tradition. Lustrous scenes of melting ice-creams and dripping candles, cotton buds and computers make intelligent and at times witty points about the nature of time and spirituality, pointing towards the excesses and vanity of consumerist culture.
This is ‘vanitas’ with a truly contemporary bent. These painstakingly rendered visions of consumerist relics are as captivating as they are unsettling. Skulls shrouded in shaving foam and cloth-like swathes underscore notions of human narcissism and impermanence while everyday products, immortalized in minute detail, present a disquieting modern call to witness the vanity of ‘Apple’ rather than apples.
This exhibition of contemplative hyperrealist pieces is the first in what promises to be a run of phenomenal shows put on by Parafin.