Petr Kvíčala / Research into the Ornament Continues
26.03.2025 - 26.07.2025
Fait Gallery, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno
Curator: Ondřej Chrobák
Opening: 26th March, 7 pm
The exhibition sums up the last fifteen years of work of the Brno painter Petr Kvíčala. The artist returns to the post-industrial environment of the gallery where he presented a retrospective of the first two decades of his work in 2008. In the imaginary total of both exhibitions, we arrive at an impressive time span of more than thirty-five years, during which the mentioned "research" into the field of ornament has been taking place. At the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, Petr Kvíčala made a name for himself with an original synthesis of the language of geometry and postmodernism. This is how he approached the defence of ornament as both an issue of mathematical order and an aesthetic phenomenon of a fading reputation. Ornament was rehabilitated, and the red wavy line became Kvíčala's signature form.
Ornaments, along with the wavy line, most often in the shape of a crenellation or a zig-zag line, continue to permeate Kvíčala's paintings like a mycelium, sometimes hidden, sometimes explicit. This polarity is perhaps more distinct in the period covered by the current exhibition than in the previous stages of his work. On the one hand, there are paintings constructed by a fine ornamental network, as if "embroidered", from which geometrical bodies of delicate colours pop out; on the other, robust, almost rustic ornaments resulting from gestic strokes of a broad brush. In recent years, the dichotomy between subdued monochromy and festival colours has found a background in the artist's life, asymmetrically divided between the city and rural seclusion. The rediscovered closeness to nature brings back into Kvíčala's current situation reminiscences and updates of his artistic discoveries made more than three decades ago. Once again, woodworking comes into play, parallel to painting. Large wooden objects should be understood primarily as extensions of Kvíčala's painting into the third dimension, offering the viewer, among other things, an immersive experience of entering the "inside" of the painting.
Kvíčala continues to work in open cycles in which he explores, tests and exploits his artistic discoveries. The exhibition, tailor-made for the unique space of the Fait Gallery, is an opportunity for the audience and the artist himself to examine the results of this work. Petr Kvíčala has invited the artist Karíma Al-Mukhtarová to his exhibition as a special "guest". Intuitively, he feels a loose affinity with her work which he associates with a sensitivity close to the art of Eva Kmentová. If Kvíčala's construction principle of his paintings was named "manual geometry" in the early days, for Karíma Al-Mukhtarová, the manual approach is analogically vital - primarily the demanding work of embroidery, where the needle and cotton penetrate impenetrable materials such as glass or wooden beams. The hidden geometry principle, represented by the implied orthogonal structure that is inevitably present even in intimate handiwork such as obsessive embroidery, perhaps unsurprisingly meets the fundamental principle of Kvíčala's work, which is an interest in the order of nature and its disruption.
Ondřej Chrobák
Petr Kvíčala has created several artworks in the public space in Brno:
- a monumental painting on the glass frontage of the Passage Hotel (2019), Lidická Street 23,
- the frontage with figurative drawings on the new church of the Blessed Virgin Mary Restituta (2019), Nezvalova Street 13,
- the Zig Zag 3,2 sculpture (2014) next to the building of the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Husova Street 18,
- painting in the Festive Hall, a terrazzo floor and painting on the vaults in the Reduta Theatre (2005), Zelný trh 313.
Inge Kosková / Flow
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Fait Gallery MEM, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno
Curators: Marie Štindlová a Lenka Vítková
Opening: 23. 2. 2022, 7 pm
Drawings,
natural as the smoke from the smouldering end of a burning stick.
Inge Kosková's drawings are characterised by subtlety and sensitive precision. With extraordinary virtuosity, she touches on ephemeral subjects such as rhythm and breath, records landscapes and music, and writes letters in non-existent scripts. The Flow exhibition showcases a more vigorous form of her drawings which manifest that even subtlety can be firm and powerful.
Inge Kosková lives in Olomouc
drawing
and breathing
her drawings have the most beautiful breaks
her drawings feature Czech forests and meadows, crushed grass by a pond
her drawings with mantras are happy wishes for the world
her drawings are her breath and perhaps also her spirit (of a kind jester)
Inge Kosková draws on her own, even though we can say that she belongs somewhere
Inge has been compared to Olga Karlíková who produced drawings as light as the feathers of birds whose sounds guided her hand
Inge has been compared to Václav Stratil, the old trickster
Inge has been compared to a few others (the circle of artists of the Olomouc drawing, as they are called)
Inge was often interpreted by Jiří Valoch when he used to stomp around at exhibition openings in pointy shoes
Inge's work is concentrated and balanced. She slowly cultivates what she has, and she has lots.
Inge sometimes draws as if she were writing letters
Inge sometimes draws
Inge Kosková is often associated with the circle of artists of the Olomouc drawing. However, her work has always been somewhat solitary. It was and is based on honest contemplation and the distillation of phenomena to the core. In the beginning, she created imaginative works referring to surrealism, gradually moving through figurative motifs with existential overtones to records of landscapes and a search for the order of nature in general. Over time, her drawing expression lost the narrative and verbal content in favour of various phenomena that are difficult to convey in words. Their common denominator is breath, rhythm, a break. The drawing expression is reduced to a simple black line and well-organised work with large white areas of paper. In her works inspired by nature, a similarity to script emerges, and this motif is developed in drawings inspired by the structure of letters and the laws of writing. This experience is further reflected in the works created to music. Another kind of record involves works recording bodily sensations and a series of drawings with mantras in which the artist covered the paper with concentrated drawings related to a circle while repeating a particular mantra. The selection of works for the MEM gallery is based on recent records of music, supplemented by several drawings with mantras and a large-scale drawing on the front wall.
When I look at Inge Kosková's delicate drawings, it is as if I was looking at materialized gestures, as if I was looking at a variant of a music score for the dance that Inge performed in her tree-shaded flat while listening to Janáček. Listening to music appears to be an excuse to allow her lifelong experience of music, rhythm, landscape, body and breath to be put on paper. The long drawing on the front wall originated in the gallery. We observed how ideas and movements were conserved in lines making up a stream that ran around the gallery whenever someone allowed it through their gaze.
Even small drawings after Janáček and Medek flow with the spontaneity and power of a river stream. It meanders and intensifies in robust drawings with mantras - concentrated records of meditation exercises produced in synchronicity with the artist's breath. A few precisely laid black lines on white sheets of paper in a white gallery.
Text: Marie Štindlová
