MAREK MEDUNA / AMONG THE DOG THIEFS

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.

MAREK MEDUNA / AMONG THE DOG THIEFS

28.09.2013 - 14.11.2013

Fait Gallery & Fait Gallery MEM
Božetěchova Street 1 (entrance from Metodějova Street), Brno
28/9 – 14/11/2013
Opening: 26/9/2013 at 7pm
Curator: Denisa Kujelová

In his conceptual work Marek Meduna demonstrates ambiguity in the norms of human perception and the apparent definitions are deliberately disturbed by the linking of, or even the blurring of the border between language and image. The viewer, similarly to the model of medieval art, i.e. the production and subsequent perception, becomes a reader. A semantic game in the relation between text and pictorial motif, illustrating and illustrated, is further supported in the reading of the artwork by questioning the conventions of installing, various combinations and the accumulation of metaphors, symbols and attributes. As clues for the reader, except for the artworks themselves (they often contain text boxes as well), there are the descriptive labels, that are often changed into artistic video installations, which are works of art in themselves, and of course there are the titles of the exhibits. The interpretation of mutual connections and parallels intended by the author ultimately lead to their decoding. The overall impression of the carefully thought-out design is actually helped by intuitive arrangement and a chain of set out principles and themes.

The author's statement is intentionally directed semantically only in part. His resignation to a full understanding of the artist's intent, supported by multiple meanings of the particular artifacts used in the installation and hidden associations and connections, allows the reader complete interpretive freedom. In this challenging narrative Meduna only sketchily applied the main theme of the exhibition (which is an offence) in different paradigms, and presents a possible line of a detective story, which should, however, as well as it's reality, principle and form remain unreadable. Therefore the construction of the story is intentionally fragmented, the characters of the detective, the victim and the offender are interchangeable and the symbolism of variations and suggested motives and attributes of the characters unclear. By breaking down the canvases into horizontal, vertical and diagonal patterns and spreading most of the drawings into bands he additionally creates an impression of a celluloid movie, which has resulted (as well as a partial absence of perspectives) into impeaching of the reality of the offered event and also the possibility of distance and detachment. Any evocation of cinematic sequences is enhanced by close-ups of objects functioning as possible signs to reveal the core of the story and by repeating motifs of the used symbolism in the consequential reading of the drawings and their possible order. Iconographic patterns of crime are derived from the author's subconscious and are shown also in the form of details and the locations of particular objects in a site-specific installation, where there are repeated the symbols of traps, baits, lures, slings and boobytraps along with motifs of investigation, searching, tracking and wandering in different plans.

In the second room we move from the detective plots of the fragmentary presented story and drawings with encrypted personal messages into general levels of ethical and philosophical categories. Through the demonstration of concepts of balance, causality, fatality, and categorization as well as others, the author encodes via acrostic the word Europe and clearly refers to Aristotle and Immanuel Kant, and their theories of causation. It is clear that the work of Marek Meduna is based on the specific humor coming from a semiotic play with meanings and through this exhibition the audience will be intentionaly caught in the schemes of their own imagination.

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