OPEN

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.

OPEN

01.06.2012 - 07.09.2012

Fait Gallery

Božetěchova Street 1 (entrance from Metodějova Street), Brno

Opening: 31/5/2012 at 7pm

Curator: Denisa Kujelová

The second exhibition of the Fait Gallery collection presents a selection of works by artists who now belong to the classics of Czech fine art of the 20th century. In the five decades, starting with the art in the 60s, there are works by Adriena Šimotová, Karel Malich, Milan Grygar, Stanislav Kolíbal, Jan Kubíček, Věra Janoušková, Jiří Kolář, Bohumír Matal, František Gross, Běla Kolářová, Alena Kučerová, Dalibor Chatrný, Václav Boštík, Václav Stratil, Jan Koblasa, Václav Jirásek, Ivan Pinkava, Jiří Kornatovský, Magdalena Jetelová, Petr Nikl and Vladimír Kokolia.

As it is apparent from the list of names, the selected works serve as an illustration of past fifty years although it’s not a complex image, but more likely a directed one in a sense that this image is based mainly on the polarity of rational geometric abstraction and the spiritual and meditative nature of art. Despite the diversity of artistic expression, from the strict geometry and the probability of structure of coincidence, acoustic recordings, collages, proláž, linear collages, assemblages, abstract expressionism, automatism, dematerialization of colored mass to recordings of movement of energies and manifestation of cosmological laws. It is a selection of artists who were influencing (or could have been influenced) each other given their joint work at contemporary artistic collectives and in cooperation outside these groups. In the presentation of this stylish and formal oscillation of artistic expression during the five decades there is an emphasis not only on indication of mutual ties, but also on the effort to present the work of some artists from a different angle in confrontation with use of media, for them not entirely typical.

Denisa Kujelová

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