Research into the Ornament Continues

Petr Kvíčala



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.



Lukáš Jasanský - Martin Polák / Sir's Hunting Ground

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Fait Gallery MEM, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno

Curator: Pavel Švec

Opening: 1. 6. 2022, 7 pm

 

“It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement, the greatest source of visual beauty, the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.“

David Attenborough

  

The acclaimed tandem active on the art scene for over three decades is renowned for their photographic cycles characterized by a high degree of realism. In a new series for the Fait Gallery, the work, of Jasanský and Polák including documentary and reportage photography, detailed studies of architecture, striking shots of nature and the Czech landscape as well as bold experiments with colour or fascinating and sophisticated abstract and geometrical compositions, is expanded with another distinctive photographic genre. 

Wildlife photography is considered one of the most challenging disciplines of photography. It requires not only technical skills such as selecting the right exposure or precise focus but also a range of other specific skills and experience, for example, the ability to predict the behaviour of animals in their natural habitat or dexterity in hiding, camouflaging and approaching animals unnoticed. This genre also generally places more emphasis on the aesthetic value of the image than, say, journalistic or documentary photography. Animals are most often captured in action, for example fighting, hunting or moving. Lukáš Jasanský and Martin Polák, who have spent most of their lives in bustling urban agglomerations, set out with a similar ambition. In the current series, they examine the extent to which a given photographic canon can serve as a means of bringing us closer to nature and deepening our ties with its seemingly separate realm. 

The essence of any healthy relationship should include the willingness to see things as they are, without expectations and bias, without stylistic pretensions and lofty ideas. And it is in this respect that the photographs of Jasanský and Polák can tell us a lot about the relationship between man and the inhabitants of wild nature. Like in their previous series, however, they do not make any straightforward judgements about the objects of their observation, leaving the meaning of their work largely open to the viewer's interpretation. When Jasanský and Polák enter "Sir's hunting ground," it does not necessarily mean that they leave their own. On the contrary, they remain faithful to their means and intentions. After all, faithfulness has always played a key role in their photographs. 

 

Text: Pavel Švec

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