ONDŘEJ HOMOLA / ARANGE

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.

ONDŘEJ HOMOLA / ARANGE

03.04.2013 - 25.05.2013

Fait Gallery PREVIEW
Dominican Square 10, Brno
3/4 - 25/5/2013
Opening: 2/4/2013 at 6pm
Curator: Martin Nytra

The installation by Ondřej Homola builds on illusory banality and dry humor based on semiotic play with the meanings of similar-sounding words „the arrangement“ and „orange“, creating a prima facie absurd and senseless situation. This relationship results from the emotions and associations that both expressions evoke. The feeling of absurdity is amplified at the idea of neatly composed pyramids of oranges in the greengrocers department, that is actually - in our cultural environment - better known from the movies and shopping during the holidays by the sea, makes this picture as a demonstration of superfluity almost ideal. At the same time it points to the interchangeability of subject and object of an art piece. The exhibition title The Arrangement also relates to this and it deliberately works with the phenomenon of the ideal of beauty by the way of depicting the appropriate ways of adjustment, presentation and construction or deconstruction of concepts. In our case, it refers in particular to modernity and a substantive man's relationship to the object, which attributes the high aesthetic quality, which consequently generates and multiplies by the characteristic way of life of the consumer society, and which thus acquires an existential nature. The individual exhibited artworks interpret the aesthetics and the art language of modernism in relation to the objectives and resources within the context of applied art and promotional art and thus refer generally to the avant-garde role in the transformation of societal values and perception of reality. In the process of deconstruction and construction therefore the means becomes the target. The physical figure breaks down into a 3D and mechanical model that supports the mold, devoid of its the symbolic function, but liberated and imbued with the spirit of the new beauty.

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