Jakub Matuska aka Makser; an Insight into Manhood.

Credit: photo @jakub_matuska_masker (Instagram)

In the small but cosy Kensington galleries of the Czech centre, I had the pleasure of discovering Jakub Matuska, aka Makser’s universe. Jakub is a Czech artist who originally started with street art and graffiti and who is now one of, if not the most sought Czech artists of his generation, with an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and the National Gallery in Prague’s 333 awards. Through his art, he attempts to answer questions such as ‘How should a person be?’ and ‘Is understanding possible?’. 

But understanding what? Well, while we hear more and more artistic noise focused on the female experience and motherhood, Jakub sheds a whole new light onto the struggles of being a middle-aged man and the fragile balance that needs to be maintained between family, marriage, and the self; how to be everything for everyone else at the same time as being everything to ourselves? In our society, men are often left feeling as though they cannot express their emotions and their struggles. While some of the figures in Jakub’s art hide in shame, his artistic voice resonates with honesty and transparency. 

Credit: Photo @jakub_matuska_masker (Instagram)

During the tour of the gallery, he explained how he tries to illustrate on canvas intangible feelings and emotions: how does it feel to have your back kill you as you are about to go to sleep? How does it feel to pretend everything is okay when everything is wrong in your marriage?  How does it feel to wake up one morning and wonder, ‘How did I end up here?’. But far from being an all-negative experience, his cartoonish style, humour, and soothing colours make his paintings a contemplation rather than a complaint. 

Indeed, his figures are the definitions of the anti-hero; they are balding, scrawny, and have holes in their pants. They shake and sweat and sit naked to stare into the void. But they are also holding their daughter’s hand as she takes her first step into the ocean, a memory she will cherish forever. And that is why even when those figures call for pity, all we can feel for them is sympathy and endearment. That is the complexity of Jakub’s art; he manages to convey the good like the bad, the tangible and the intangible, and the pitiful with the admirable, all in an attempt to show what it is like to be a man over 40 in our society. 

Open until the 24th of January 2025, ‘A Shocking Experience Behind the Curtain’ is a show to see, for you might just leave with a whole new outlook on manhood.