ONE MOMENT / Collector's cycle of important private collections Part two: FOR YOUR EYES ONLY / Jiří Valoch´s collection

The events that are present in Tomáš Bárta's paintings take place between two spaces and the partition between them. These pictures inevitably set a "backward course" through the history of European painting, all the way back to Leon Battista Alberti’s reflections on the construction of pictorial space which he incorporated into his seminal work De pictura (1435). However, instead of a well-organised renaissance arrangement, Bárta offers us more ambiguous spatial relations and a spectral illusion of the objects inhabiting his paintings, as if architecture produced its own ghosts.

ONE MOMENT / Collector's cycle of important private collections Part two: FOR YOUR EYES ONLY / Jiří Valoch´s collection

22.11.2014 - 15.01.2015

Fait Gallery
Božetěchova Street 1 (entrance from Metodějova Street), Brno
22/11/2014 – 15/1/2015
Opening: 20/11/2014 at 7pm
Curator: Ondřej Chrobák

The series ONE MOMENT continues with a representative selection from the collection of Jiří Valoch. The character of Jiří Valoch, a theorist, a curator and an artist, has become in many ways a synonym for the art scene in Brno for last five decades. However, the range of his activities significantly exceeded more than a local level. He definitely deserves the current acknowledgement of his key role in introducing and putting over of conceptual art, not only in the Czech Republic, but also a broader Central European context. The creation of a personal collection has been an integral part of artistic, theoretical and practical life for Jiří Valoch. Unlike the classic collections created by art lovers, Jiří Valoch´s collection fullfilled primarily a need for a documentary personal archive. This does not mean that it was not built based on brilliant taste, opinion and passion. The opposite is true. The current sample, which is the first public presentation of the legendary and full of legends collection, is also a preview of an extensive project of the Moravian Gallery in Brno dedicated to the great person Jiří Valoch.

Over forty works shown from more than twenty artists exhibited in Fait Gallery represents only a fragment of a Jiří Valoch’s colossal collection. In 2002 Jiří Valoch handed over to the Prague National Gallery a selection of more than three thousands art works. However the current exhibition didn’t have to use this source. The exhibition also primarily focuses on paintings, sculptures and objects, leaving aside, except of a few exceptions, the works on paper, which otherwise represent a significant part of the collection. We need to emphasise, that all the authors represented in the collection can also be traced in the theoretical reflections by Jiří Valoch. He analysed their works in detail in the opening texts for exhibitions, which he prepared as a curator as well or in reviews and essays in professional journals. Many of the exhibitions he prepared for the Brno House of Arts, where he worked between 1972 and 2001. He also maintained regular personal contact with most of the artists and he significantly influenced many of them. From this perspective there is no parallel to Valoch‘s collection within the Czech context.

Ondřej Chrobák

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