TETRADEKAGON/ THE SELECTION FROM THE FAIT GALLERY COLLECTION FOCUSED ON THE YOUNGEST GENERATION

“I am sure, that there are correlations in the world, the sound is connected to the visual and also the visual doesn’t exist without the acoustic.”

Milan Grygar has been exploring the specific concept of relations between visual and acoustic in very diverse and often contradictory parallels for more than five decades. The fact that in the context of the Czech art scene Grygar is absolutely remarkable, is influenced by his interest in experimental music and the follow up of the development of international inter media tendencies based in the contemporary avant-garde music (beside the system of free atonality of Arnold Schoenberg, we can mention the Notation of New Music by Erhard Karkoschka and the aleatoric concept of John Cage).

With regard to other artists experimenting with the new music and its alternative graphic notations, Grygar`s work was defined mainly by the possibility of correlations of acoustic and visual components which determine each other. In the case of Milan Grygar, sound is not tied to the artwork just by associations based on synesthesia (however it is possible to think about his work in this way, without any interpretative framework) and it is also not a completely autonomous element. It is a completely unique principle in art, when the acoustic perception gets a fuller emphasis when creating the artwork in such a sophisticated way that the picture becomes actually retrospectively an instruction, a transcription of how to read it once more, but on the acoustic level this time.

By trying to clarify the process itself and the direction of motion, he additionally discovered (with the help of tape and video recording) the hidden potential of this twofold connection. This dual dimensionality of visual and acoustic he later completed with the actual recording of the work process. He connected all three levels through mutual time unity and to a simple visual expressive power of the art piece. He, thanks to the sound, added the possibility to define the space and by adding the option to also record the process at the time.

The phenomenon of sound has permanently been present in Grygar’s art work since the mid-60s, when the artist, after focusing fully on the medium of drawing, systematically started to examine it and to record it. The sound, at the beginning defined by a series of individual strokes issued by specific instruments, became an unusual parabola to the visual rhythm. After a series of drawings and paintings with wooden sticks, and acoustic drawings, with the help of other typical tools, he developed polyphonic possibilities of drawing gestures, especially with the help of mechanical self-propelled machines. For those living drawings, as well as in other drawings with a performative character, especially tactile, there is a huge influence of the chance, which, while probably trying for the closest connection of visual and audio elements, he replaces his own will by more objective, not dependent factors. However, the element of presumptive chance is firmly controlled and determined by the artist himself.

In consequent repetition of drawn syntactic formula of the square grid in other types of drawings so called audiplastic and black and white and white and black canvases with linear grids, the sound is shown in different ways, that violate the monotony of structure either by a change of the rhythm, colour or by adding some other drawing element. The acoustic quality of Grygar‘s drawings within modern musical notation is more noticeable in his ranks of formulas and scores. These were, no doubt, created with the idea of a specific audio result. The possibility of interpretation is also open and the presence of the artist at the musical interpretations is absolutely vital.

After more than twenty years, the artist returned to painting a series of black paintings with colored linear elements based on the contrast of monochrome surfaces and sharp, complementarily coloured lines of fixed light.The very large and also very diverse series of Antiphons is created by minimalistic geometrical shapes and subtle lines, which are gradually accentuated with colour. However, the use of bold colours can be dated back to the 60s when the artist created the original models for Spatial scores that were produced in monumental scale almost half-century later. A radical shift occurs in the newest work, where Milan Grygar steps back from the variety of colour and returns to the using of a piece of wood to create a series of large scale drawings and paintings.

T: Denisa Kujelová

TETRADEKAGON/ THE SELECTION FROM THE FAIT GALLERY COLLECTION FOCUSED ON THE YOUNGEST GENERATION

07.02.2013 - 27.03.2013

Fait Gallery
Božetěchova Street 1 (entrance from Metodějova Street), Brno
7/2 – 27/3/2013
Opening: 7/2/2013 at 7pm
Curators: Denisa Kujelová and Martin Nytra

The already third » Selection « from the collection of Fait Gallery is this time dedicated entirely to the most recent work of the youngest generation of artists who have just entered in the art scene. The exhibition presents some key work of young artists as well as works indicating their future direction. Chronologically, it directly follows the previous two exhibitions which focused on the Czechoslovak modernism and the art of the second half of the 20th century.

This exhibition, among other things, tries to present the direction in which the contemporary art practice is going. Therefore, the selection of works is not limited thematically or by a medium.

There are classical media, painting, drawing and photography and media quite already common in art profession, such as video art, installations and light installations. The spectrum of approaches is also wide; it ranges from concentrated search of original language in the tradition of abstract painting, conceptual examination of options and nature of drawing, to more literary contents and sensitive exploration of shared intimacy, the relationship between culture, images and memories, to the works that deal with the actual functions of art and semantic shifts thorough time. Art may rely on traditional themes of landscape, figure and space and reformulate the neglected or reveal the paradox of contemporary perspectives of perception and understanding these symbols. The depth and diversity of the spectrum that the contemporary art scene has to offer are represented here, necessarily, fragmentally and incompletely, nevertheless, the selection represents sufficiently a specific range of views and procedures that are discussed and formulated in contemporary art. The unifying element is therefore the time the works were created, our present on which the authors are based and which they reflect, although each in quite peculiar way.

The exhibition presents individual works / collection of works by following artists:
Jan Brož, Katarína Hládeková,
Vendula Knopová, Martin Kocourek, Ondřej Kotrč, Petr Krátký,
Kamila Maliňáková, Pavla Naďová,
Martin Nytra, Johana Pošová,
Adéla Sobotková, Teri Varhol,
Michaela Vrbková & Diana Wink

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