FOR MANY DIFFERENT EARS / THE SELECTION FROM THE FAIT GALLERY COLLECTION

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

FOR MANY DIFFERENT EARS / THE SELECTION FROM THE FAIT GALLERY COLLECTION

23.11.2013 - 13.03.2014

Fait Gallery
Božetěchova Street 1 (entrance from Metodějova Street), Brno
23/11 – 13/3/2014
Opening: 21/11/2013 at 7pm
Curators: Denisa Kujelová

This time the selection from the collection is not defined by generations, but by thematic linking of selected works across the generational range of artists represented in the collection, in order to find characteristic features of their work and put it in the context of the development of modern art and it‘s resonances in the present. The central themes are tone and line, icon and character, mutual correlations and contrasts between the different art works, both paradigmatic and syntagmatic. The title of the exhibition "For many different ears" in accordance with the parallel of the position of contemporary art, directly refers to the eponymous essay from a set of theoretical writings Modern Artistic Expression, in which Josef Čapek defends the character of modern art in the contemporary context by an appeal to the viewer's open-mindedness and with his ability of sharp and synthetical perception.

The confrontation of authors from several generations allows for the possibility to revise the established categories and terminology of historically proven practise. The attitudes of the individual authors disagree on many levels, but they are connected by the line of abstraction, conceptual refining of the art work idea and thoughtout use of expressive means. The mind precisely formulating the idea of the art work and a control of all aspects of the artistic production. Although the present art pieces declare their rationality by their intellectual overlap, we can say that all these works are characterized by a high degree of sensitivity. Despite all the noise, it is possible to discover that silence is an important theme of the exhibition. Silence as an aim or origin, or as the beginning of the end. Therefore it is better to speak about the intellect that has the ability to perceive the areas of knowledge, which are on the other hand hardly translated into a structured and semantically unambiguous message by speech. Relationships among the artworks are anticipated with respect to the relative boundaries of defining concepts, the entities of the art pieces themselves and the audience. The present art pieces also consciously work with time, which in this case falls apart and becomes a general and abstract concept, or they assure us about it’s presence and flow by cooperation between visual and audio features. The enthusiasm of forms projecting a vision of the future blends with the retrospection in a melancholic mood.

The title of the exhibition is therefore offered as a kind of metaphor for perception of the art pieces, inseparatebly linked to the context and the viewer's own experience as a multi-layered process, during which the meaning of modern art is created.

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