PAVLA SCERANKOVÁ / THE OLD LIGHT IN THE GALAXIES DEPARTMENT

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

PAVLA SCERANKOVÁ / THE OLD LIGHT IN THE GALAXIES DEPARTMENT

27.09.2014 - 13.11.2014

Fait Gallery MEM
Božetěchova Street 1 (entrance from Metodějova Street), Brno
27/9 – 13/11/2014
Opening: 25/9/2014 at 7pm
Curator: Jan Zálešák

How many things that surround us do we really understand? But we can still use them, touch them, speak to them, put them into motion. This deep, while unconscious understanding that seems to be inscribed in the motions and that is build by motions, touches and gestures, takes an important place in the work of Pavla Sceranková.

In the early stages of her career, Pavla Sceranková was searching for ways to "animate" - how to depict or categorize movement - while remaining in the area of sculpture or object creation. An example result of this search are the objects from the cycle Memory as a new reality (2006). A slightly different approach has been used in a more recent series of objects Yes or No (2010). Items that we well know as silent partners in our rooms and kitchens (lamp, porcelain dinner service) seem to explode in front of us, but just before the fractions have managed to fly in all directions, someone pressed the PAUSE button. In addition to works in which the motion remains only a kind of unfinished option Sceranková also creates sculptures and objects, that the audience can touch, and therefore they can not only by looking, but also by moving update the contents that are placed in them.

The installation in the Fait Gallery MEM is loosely based on the author's exhibitions Woman on the Moon (Old Town Hall GHMP, 2013) and Constellation (Atrium MG in Brno, 2013). In both she was searching for ways to expand the dimensions of the viewer's experience and understanding tied to personal and physical experience of a metaphorical move in the universe. Great and for the vast majority of people a truly unimaginable size of the world "out there" in these exhibitions formed a counterpoint to the "small" human experience again based in "small", familiar subjects.

The form of the installation in the MEM gallery was significantly influenced by meetings with Dr. Bruno Jungwiert from the Galaxies department at the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Discussions with an expert on the dynamics and the evolution of galaxies brought Pavla Sceranková to a key theme of the exhibition, which is the collision of galaxies. In order to appreciate the drama of this event, we must be able to think in scales and in time periods that almost exceed our imagination. If the human observer was inside such a collision, he would not, because of the vast distances between (potentially) conflicting elements, notice anything at all.

This paradox intrigued the author and the desire to let the audience literally enter into the colliding structures became the starting point in the design of the exhibition. The symbolic move into intergalactic space is, on the material level of the installations, connected with the intimate space of the kitchen or the dining room - the space, which, aside from the already somehow outdated cultural stereotype characterising it as a purely female area, is primarily a family space, a space of harmony, but also an arena of conflicts and battles. If we put a piece of saucer or pot mounted to the end of the rotatable structure into motion, we risk a real crash and also animate a model of the universe. Therefore there is a crash of not only incommensurable formats, but also incommensurable time dimensions. The human time in which we are born, die, fall in love and hold deep hate is, in the context of "space-time" of a galactic collision, completely worthless. But maybe the opposite is also true, when a scientific version of the absolute crumbles under emotions, that may be put into a motion by a piece of rotating kitschy chinoiserie...

Jan Zálešák

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