JIŘÍ VALOCH / WORDS

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.

19.08.2015 - 02.10.2015

Fait Gallery Preview
Dominican Square 10, Brno
Opening: 18. 8. 2015 at 6pm

The exhibition Words is like a book for lazy readers, but with a smart mind. It reaches maximum effect with minimum words. The exhibition includes the art work by Jiří Valoch, which has actually been introduced to public as a gallery installation for the first time. It was originally intended for private reading, for personal communication through correspondence with loved ones and like-minded colleagues (and possibly to ease the postal distribution to foreign exhibitions and art shows). This form of sharing is reflected also in the materials: paper sheets, mainly A4 size.

The cycle of 12 scores - 12 films can be classified as the Conceptual poetry. They are brief, but deeply imaginative messages placed sequentially one behind another. The aesthetic qualities of the text so typical for the author's concrete and visual poetry of the 60s, are being receded into the background here in favour of the reading process itself. Thanks to the fact that this text is presented on the gallery wall, it actually brings an interesting connection between walking and reading, physical and intellectual experience. (Jiří Valoch frequently works with physicality in the sense of evoking different sensations, smells, colors, gestures and movement.) Another part of the exhibition are drawings devoted to Gerta Pospíšilová (the author's life partner, an interpreter and a long-term employee of Brno House of Arts, whose heritage should not be forgotten).

The whole exhibition comes to a head by a text installation: before the beginning. It is a conversion of a text originally created on A4 paper size to a gallery wall. It is again a common principle of Valoch’s art work from the '70s, when he substituted the space of unavailable official galleries by a sheet of the paper. Therefore the audience actually enter into an imaginary book ending with a sentence about the universal power of language. About its ability to relate to a condition which we can not reach within our existence. The text installation before beginning then opens a free field of ideas and meanings. It's like a poet's invitation to an adventurous journey.

Text: Jana Písaříková

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