SELECTION FROM THE FAIT GALLERY COLLECTION I
23.10.2025 - 10.01.2026
Fait Gallery, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno
Exhibition concept: Ondřej Kotrč
The first of two overview exhibitions assesses the collecting activities of the Fait Gallery, initiated by Igor Fait and systematically developed since 2012 in synergy with the chief curator Denisa Kujelová, who worked in the gallery until mid-2025.
Given the extensive nature of the collection which comprises over 1,000 items, and considering the multiple artistic approaches and the time span covered by the collection, which ranges from the pre-war avant-garde to contemporary art, it appeared natural to organise two consecutive shows.
In order to maintain a certain homogeneity in the exhibition, it was necessary to find a simple and universal key for selecting the artists and individual works. In most cases, this took the form of an abstract geometric-constructivist tendency which, with a few exceptions, involved pure minimalism, while in other cases it was softer abstraction with connotations of a reality-inspired starting point.
Part of the exhibition is devoted to the presentation of pre-war modernism, making up the core of the collection from the very beginning. It is the cubist tendency, evident in the works of Emil Filla and the more frequently represented Antonín Procházka, that forms a link with the mentioned geometric-abstract tendency which in many cases takes on a mathematical character in the works of artists active in the second half of the 20th century.
In connection with cubism, it is also necessary to mention that the exhibition includes several works related more to contemporary art which can be described as explicitly figurative, mediating a kind of neo-cubism and thus making an exception from the rule within the exhibition concept.
A confrontational aspect is supplied by the younger generation of artists fluidly incorporated into the exhibition. They function as a subtle refreshing and at the same time convey the message that the recycling of basic forms defined in the first half of the 20th century is still relevant, even though the artists' starting points are now quite different.
From the media perspective, the exhibition provides an overview of the segment of the collection that exclusively addresses traditional art forms such as painting, drawing, graphic art, objects, sculpture, assemblage, and various types of collage.
The overall aim of the exhibition is to present the part of the collection relating to the mentioned trends, to define and demonstrate formal and content-unifying elements among artists across the given time scope, and to set them in a mutual context.
Ondřej Kotrč
Valentýna Janů / Salty Mascara
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Fait Gallery PREVIEW, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno
opening: 23. 5. 2018 at 7 pm
curator: Laura Amann
Hello dear,
Feel free to walk in.
Sit down.
Watch.
Let the sun set on your face.
Everything is in transition.
Light becomes dark.
Your core body temperature sinks.
Words create imagery.
Let the sun guide your rhythm.
You realise the table is a chair.
Or was it a bed.
Can you even feel the frictionless surface?
“Your living room is a cinema.”
It is real but also surreal in its dream-like fluidity.
If you feel like it, think about the following…
Sunrise paints the sky with pinks and sunset with peaches Text > Image > Text
We are inclined to assume that images are by nature static and poetry temporal. Are you really sure about this? Isn’t it so, that all media bear traces of other media and therefore are inherently mixed? Maybe it is more interesting to focus on decoding the precise dosages and ingredients of those mixtures? Think about: What is a medium made of? How do we experience it? How does it manifest itself in time and space? Which main sign system does it use?
Maybe the differences do not always lie where we think they lie.
In this sense it is interesting to think about the way we describe an image. Do you visualise or verbalise? Are you static or dynamic in your style? Do you tend to focus on spatial perception, precise localisations, detailed descriptions and use mainly nouns? Or do you focus on temporal expressions, dynamic descriptions, in short the narrative, and lots of motion verbs? Does it make a difference if the image is familiar to you? And what if somebody else had already described the image to you before?
Ultimately it is your choice how to describe and therefore how to see.
One day, I saw the sunset forty-three times Consciousness > Unconsciousness > Consciousness
When we dream, or rather when we remember a dream we operate at the borders of consciousness and at times in the transitions between waking and sleeping. And though typically thought to be passive and unproductive, the worlds that sleep contains and performs are worlds that inform and influence our waking lives. Though we know very little about why we need sleep, we do know it clears toxic metabolic debris, consolidates our memory and helps us learn and reorganise information accumulated while awake.
So if sleep is a productive mode in itself in a different state of consciousness,
Is it possible that the imaginative labour of artistic practice is a form of public dreaming?
Public dreaming, that allows us to enter a liminal state of emotional transference, where we cannot differentiate intimacy from distance, ourselves from the other and familiarity from reality.
A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn Ethics > Aesthetics > Ethics
If aesthetics has everything to do with sensation and perception through bodily feeling, good design has actually made us numb.
The smooth surfaces of modern design are there to eliminate any friction. Good design has become our anaesthetic, allowing us to prolong our liminal state of unconsciousness into waking ours. But good design was not only supposed to look like good design it was also supposed to make us ‘good’, to give us instant virtues. Good design is our antidote.
All good.
But who are we to need this smoothness so badly?
Your story left me with a bitter after-taste…
I hope your make-up is waterproof.
