_Slope_ is a natural painting created through my collaboration with natural elements — rain, sun, wind and microbial activity — on an inclined surface. Using local clays from the Moravian Karst, I placed the canvas in my garden and let time and weather shape it over several weeks before finalizing the work and preparing it as a finished gallery piece.

The painting focuses on the ambivalence of perception — the shifting ways the image can be seen as a landscape, as abstraction, or as a trace of the process itself, formed by layers of natural pigments gradually washing down a tilted plane. The work relates to my ongoing interest in the human mind, meditation, perception, and the connection between body, landscape and time.

Exhibited in _Beyond the Landscape_ (_Za obzor krajiny_) at the Museum in Šlapanice, 25 Oct 2025 – 18 Jan 2026.

Slope

Following my earlier series _Drying Puddles_ from 2008, where I explored the direct recording of time through slowly evolving natural traces, I returned to working with natural clays from the Moravian Karst. I expose the clay outdoors in my garden, allowing weather to shape the work. Rain dissolves yellow clay into the prepared canvas, forming a temporary puddle that dries over time. During this process, I continue shaping the work using stones.

This canvas shows a Buddha figure, or a person practicing zazen — the seated meditation of Zen, which is also part of my own practice. The red line, appearing like a spiritual aura, emerged spontaneously as the red component of iron pigments separated in water. Chance is a key part of these process-based experiments. The result may appear abstract, and viewers often perceive different forms depending on their perception — the human mind has long been one of my central subjects.

I fixed the pigments with an alcohol-based fixative. Behind the raw canvas is a second layer, primed with white acrylic gesso.

Exhibited in _Beyond the Landscape_ (_Za obzor krajiny_) at the Museum in Šlapanice, 25 Oct 2025 – 18 Jan 2026.

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Jan Karpíšek

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