In Jakub Michalak’s work, the image unfolds as a field of experience in which seeing is never limited to the evidence of the visible. Landscape appears less as a subject than as a device – a means of questioning the very nature of perception, not only in its optical dimension, but also in what it engages when faced with what eludes sight, what lies beyond immediate vision, in a form of diffuse transcendence.

Working primarily in painting on marked wooden panels, Michalak brings into tension the precision of drawing with the accidental traces of the suport – scratches, grooves, and fractures that recall cracked marble or damaged mirrors. These surfaces become the site of an encounter between landscape imagery, architectural diagrams, technical lines, and abstract projections. The pictorial space thus emerges as an unstable zone where different regimes of representation intersect, challenging both the traditional iconography of landscape and the intellectual systems that organize vision.

Sparse horizons, spectral vegetation, and deserted terrains evoke post-human environments stripped of any naturalistic lyricism. Linear elements resembling cables or electrical wires traverse these scenes, guiding and disrupting the gaze, and blurring the boundary between illusionistic depth and the painting’s frontal surface. Through shifting perspectives, symmetrical structures, and visual doubling, the compositions demand an active, searching gaze.

Fragments of walls, tables, or pedestal-like forms appear as remnants of abandoned human structures, inscribing these spaces within a suspended temporality – after the disappearance of their protagonists. Within this extended quiet, natural matter, technological forms, and optical effects coexist, outlining a relational and ecological vision of perception in which seeing is no longer an act of mastery, but a condition of shared presence with that which, visible or not, continues to inhabit the image.