SELECTION FROM THE FAIT GALLERY COLLECTION II
25.02.2026 - 02.05.2026
Fait Gallery, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno
Exhibition concept: Ondřej Kotrč
Opening: 25th February, 6 pm
While loosely following in the wake of the previous exhibition, the second part of this overview of the Fait Gallery collection represents, in a certain sense, its opposite. In contrast to the previous instalment, which primarily represented abstract art from the second half of the 20th century, with a focus on geometry and structure, Czech modernism and its resonance and evident influences in contemporary Czech painting, this exhibition directs its attention towards art that places greater emphasis on depicting the real world. Contradicting the artists working in the spirit of geometric abstraction, presenting more universal subject matter, these works are inspired by reality, depicting it more or less explicitly while bringing to the forefront an appreciation of the human figure and its depiction.
It is precisely this fascination with the human body and physicality, manifested either directly or metaphorically through fragments, tools, and situations inextricably intertwined with it, that forms the framework of the exhibition. As such, the exhibition features a number of works reflecting themes such as sport, while at the same time exploring a certain existential decadence as well as aspects of humour within the context of this fascination with the human condition.
Chronologically, we loosely move on to works created predominantly after the year 2000, which is also evidenced by the wider representation of the medium of installation, an example of which is the large-scale work Deep in Enemy Territory by the Rafani Group, one of the group's most extensive projects. The installation fulfils an integral part of the exhibition and, as was already mentioned, comments on a complex psychological situation through the relationship between visual art and the symbolism of sport.
The exhibition follows a predefined selective framework, yet it does not aspire to present an indisputable message regarding a specific issue or topic, a fact that is understandable given its nature. It does, however, seek to showcase the fruits of Fait Gallery and Igor Fait's extensive collecting activities over the past 15 years, to present a series of high-quality works by both Czech and foreign artists, to allow them to come into their own in their individuality and, at the same time, to present the sphere in which these individualities coexist and support each other within a compact whole.
Ondřej Kotrč
Represented artists:
Vasil Artamonov & Alexej Klyuykov, Alžběta Bačíková, Ondřej Basjuk, Nina Beier, Marie Blabolilová, Josef Bolf, Radek Brousil, Jan Brož, Michel Comte, Milena Dopitová, Markéta Filipová, Jiří Franta & David Böhm, Jan Gemrot, Martin Gerboc, Michal Gogora, Damien Hirst, Katarína Hládeková & Ondřej Homola, Katarína Hládeková & Jiří Kovanda, Jakub Hošek, František Hudeček, Matyáš Chochola, Krištof Kintera, Eva Kmentová, Vendula Knopová, Vladimír Kokolia, Jiří Kolář, Eva Koťátková, Ondřej Kotrč, Alena Kotzmannová, Denisa Krausová, Nika Kupyrova, Alicja Kwade, Martin Lukáč, Kamila Maliňáková, Pavla Malinová, Pavel Matyska, Marek Meduna, Jan Merta, Svätopluk Mikyta, Kamila Musilová, Jan Nálevka & Václav Stratil, Pavla Naďová, Petr Nikl, Michal Pěchouček, Ivan Pinkava, Jan Poupě, Skupina Rafani, Tomáš Roubal, Lucia Sceranková, Pavla Sceranková, František Skála, Matěj Smetana, Václav Stratil, Tomáš Svoboda, Robert Šalanda, Adriena Šimotová, Jiří Topínka, Lubomír Typlt, unconductive trash, Kateřina Vincourová, Lenka Vítková
The exhibition Selection from the Fait Gallery Collection II is a sales exhibition and is the last exhibition of Fait Gallery in its current space at Ve Vaňkovce 2.
Milan Maur / Uncertain Sequences of Action
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Fait Gallery, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno
Curators: Denisa Kujelová, Ondřej Navrátil and Jana Písaříková
Opening: 19 October 2022, 7 pm
Following the Sun was undoubtedly one of the key points of Milan Maur's work. This radical action, documented by an unclosed circle on a map and accompanied by the text on 9 May 1983 I followed the sun from dawn to dusk, anticipated his future direction as an artist. In the course of the 1980s, Maur developed in the Czech milieu unique conceptual practice based on the observation of minute natural sequences and events. This was not, however, a “desk-job” investigation at a safe distance from the observed subject but in situ research, requiring physical involvement and vigilant attention close to meditation. Specific examples include the artist’s numerical series documenting the autumn falling of leaves of various species of trees over several days, or his shadow images in which he recorded shadow shifts throughout the day at given intervals. This individual research was certainly also a personal ritual and self-preservation method of the artist's survival in totalitarian Czechoslovakia of the 1980s.
The first part of the exhibition presents works that convey the artist's natural science interests and at the same time seek to answer the following question: what is actually behind all this endless swarming of nature? Is it a coincidence or another level of order? And is it possible to unravel its system, to relate to it, or to identify with it? We thus enter a world of thought that hasn’t lost its relevance even after all these years but opens up to us further and new meanings in the times of climate crisis and a search for a way out of the solitary confinement of anthropocentrism and its blindness, deafness and arrogance.
By the mid-1990s, Maur's work seemed to have reached its end. However, the feeling that this was one of those short-lived careers is quickly suppressed by the further parts of the exhibition. The extensive body of photographs from the period after the turn of the millennium is linked to his earlier work primarily by a conceptual strategy of recording the environment that works with the principle of a predefined creative process, more exactly, with the experimental adjustment of the optics of a sophisticated Hasselblad camera. The titles of the cycles testify that they were created during expeditions to distant lands, which on the one hand echoes the several-month-long pilgrimages of Maur's youth and on the other introduces us to the new life situation of the artist, who in the 1990s went from being an outsider and a night watchman in the Plzeň cemetery to a successful entrepreneur and an enthusiastic traveller.
An essential part of the exhibition is a new installation related to the artist's recent experience in a hospital environment - a place where every person becomes a constantly controlled and measured subject in the gears of a fixed order. Here, Maur returns to and approaches his own body as concretely as possible. Whereas until now we have only suspected the artist’s external and internal sentiments behind informative and poetic notes in the margins of the paper (...I was tracing the shadow of a pear tree...), we now see the outlines of his body, captured by his son on a hospital bed, and for the first time ever he himself becomes the subject of the record - in an attempt to record the very fragility of human existence and the potentiality of its end. Milan Maur's drawings, photographs and installations can thus be understood as a record of a sequence through which a particular event is singled out from an otherwise cyclic universe. This might be the world, the universe, nature, or a person’s existence.
