VOLUPTUOUS TOWNS – city art or art about cities

Art in the city and art about cities

What can city art be about? We all knowt: cities have their scents, they have their own color palette. They influence our sensations. They have their mysterious nooks and crannies, ugliest alleys, manicured lawns and mountains of rubbish on the sidewalks, neighborhoods of prosperity and poverty. It is us, the residents, who make them what they are, unique in our different, sensually fascinating way. We create them, their beauty and ugliness. We perceive them constantly with all our senses. If living in them or just visiting them.

Let’s look at city art like Jan Astner in his Voluptuous towns. Let us gaze at the colors, admire the attractive, captivating nature of the surface of the paintings. Let us fill the senses with passion, desire, delightful views, because every city is different. Just like us.

Cityscapes in painting

City art by Jan Astner attracts and repels at the same time. This is what the artist wants to show us in his paintings. The pictures from the “Voluptuous towns” series are not cityscapes. These are notes from meetings, a catalog of feelings and sensations. It is a moment spent with a coffee in the square, the smell of the alley while walking, the atmosphere of conversation with the residents met, it is a memory that remains after leaving.

Cities are sensual. When we study them more carefully, they reveal hidden secrets and taboos. City art by Jan Astner shows us cities from the inside out, from the inside. From the hidden side. „Voluptuous towns” show their true face only if we carefully look at them, go beyond the conventional perception and allow ourselves to absorb their true nature. Unbridled, lustful, sometimes even defiant. Because what they show on the outside is their image, what they hide is the truth about ourselves. People make cities. Urban art by Astner aims to show us this face of cities.