Jakob Bokulich (born 1974, Santa Cruz, CA) is a multi-disciplinary artist working primarily as a painter. He has been exhibited and collected in California, Europe, and New York since 1992, with seven solo shows and over 20 group shows. His work is in the collection of the Croatian Embassy in Paris, and he was awarded an Honorarium grant in 2018 by Burning Man for his 23 foot-tall kinetic sculpture, which was six years in the making and involved the work of over 100 volunteers.
An essentially self-trained artist, Bokulich first began painting in oils after a house fire left his family homeless, and he stayed temporarily with a painter who inspired him to begin painting at the age of 12. His artistic career began young, at 17. After a nearly sold-out show in Santa Cruz, he left on his own to Europe, painting and exhibiting his work in galleries and pop-up shows in Paris, Saint-Tropez, Chamonix, and Split, Croatia. At times living in art squats and on the streets, his wartime experiences in Croatia between 1993-1995 - as well as his exposure to the work of Joseph Beuys - eventually led him to eschew the gallery system and pursue the concept of "social sculpture".
During a 20 year period of seldom painting, he explored how to make art both more accessible and socially relevant. He immersed himself in building art communities in San Francisco and Oakland, including the Artship, a 500-ft ship built in 1934, which he worked to convert into an art center in Oakland. His piece Red-Blooded American gained notoriety in San Francisco, and with FIGHT he invited his audience to question the definition of art, competing in the Golden Gloves as a boxer (he won runner-up). He made a film as a conceptual art comedy, where he played Bob Ross attempting to make a drawing of Rauschenberg's Erased DeKooning Drawing. He explored performance and ritual, eventually leading to film, which led him to spend time in Los Angeles as an actor and filmmaker in his pursuit of an accessible, multi-media art form.
Bokulich moved to New York in 2015 and returned to painting, as well as kinetic sculpture. His work is informed by his experience in film (from large Hollywood sets to filming in Cameroon, Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya, Nepal, and Bangladesh), meditation, his involvement at Burning Man since 2000, and years of investigating the nature of art. Often autobiographical, his work observes the contemporary human experience, pairing the analytical with the emotional, the structured with the intuitive. He views his paintings as a medium to reinforce seeing, in an era in which he feels the senses have become dulled.
“This portrait of my friend the composer Andy Akiho takes its name from one of my favorite compositions of his. The score for Andy's 21 is equally complex and accessible, with an intricate, overlapping rhythm. The idea for this painting came after many long conversations with Andy about parallels between visual art and music, often discussing numbers and geometry. One day we visited the memorial to Nikola Tesla at the New Yorker Hotel, and Andy told me of Tesla's affinity for pigeons. We stopped at the stairs of the postal building across from Penn Station, and we set up a photoshoot with him surrounded by pigeons and seagulls.” - Jakob Bokulich
“I worked the picture into a composition with 21 steps and 42 birds, interwoven with a pattern that I derived from the Buddhist ‘endless knot.’ As it turned out, this painting became my main preoccupation during the pandemic lockdown in New York. The sense of time stopping and subsequent re-evaluation of purpose that many of us experienced as a result of the pandemic delved me into deep meditation while working on the sensorial nuances of the piece.
This painting is another step in my reflection on what distinctly does a painting do? A picture can be considered as a kind of window or mirror, and a painting is distinguishable from a digital image experienced via screens, projection, or print. Painting could be considered for practical purposes as sculpture - an object to be experienced in physical reality. With that in mind, I work in a way that light plays differently on different aspects of the painting. At a distance, the painting first reads as abstract, feeling like a window looking outside. Once one is in closer proximity to the painting, the representational imagery emerges, leading the eye on a dance between the figurative and the abstract, planar elements of the picture. I feel like I've gotten it right when this interplay ‘tickles the eye,’ with rhythm and emotion that suggests music and synesthesia.” - Jakob Bokulich
To learn more about Jakob Bokulich and to see more of his work, please visit his website and follow him on Instagram.
Exhibition History
Solo Exhibits
THIRTY SIX GALLERY Beacon, New York, 2020
ARTSHIP Oakland, 2003
LIGHT San Francisco, 2001
LE LION d'OR Chamonix, France, 1994
CROATIAN EMBASSY IN PARIS Paris, 1994
MICHAEL ANGELO GALLERY Santa Cruz, 1994
GALERIE DANS LE KIOSQUE FLOTTANT Paris, 1993
GALERIJA PORTA AUREA Split, Croatia, 1993
LAVOIR PUBLIC VASSEROT Saint-Tropez, France, 1993
Selected Group Exhibits
MICHELE MACK GALLERY New York, 2021
MICHELE MACK GALLERY New York, 2020
CHASE CONTEMPORARY New York, 2020
CHASE CONTEMPORARY New York, 2019
VAN DER PLAS GALLERY New York, 2019
HG CONTEMPORARY BROOKLYN New York, 2018
BURNING MAN Nevada, 2018
BURNING MAN Nevada, 2017
DREAM FACTORY Los Angeles, 2011
LIVE CULTURE STUDIO Los Angeles, 2010
BACKSPACE Portland, Oregon, 2004
START SOMA San Francisco, 2004
START SOMA San Francisco, 2003
VARNISH FINE ART San Francisco, 2003
LIMINAL GALLERY Oakland, 2003
BALAZO/MISSION BADLANDS GALLERY San Francisco, 2002
NEW COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA San Francisco, 2001
LIVE CULTURE (AT THE CREAMERY) Oakland, 2000
GALERIE SSOCAPI Paris, 1998
CRUCIBLE STEEL GALLERY San Francisco, 1998
MAMONE GALLERY San Francisco, 1997
TROJANOWSKA GALLERY San Francisco, 1994
DOM OMLADINE ART SQUAT Split, Croatia, 1994
GALERIE LE BRETON Paris, 1993
MICHAEL ANGELO GALLERY Santa Cruz, 1992
DANCING MAN GALLERY Santa Cruz, 1992