Václav Stratil / Landscapes

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.

Václav Stratil / Landscapes

15.06.2016 - 19.11.2016

Fait Gallery
Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno
21. 9. - 19. 11. 2016
Vernissage: 21. 9. 2016 at 7pm
Curator: Jiří Ptáček

The further extended continuation of Stratil’s exhibition Landscapes shows the next chapters in the life work of the Brno painter, illustrator and performer in relation to his friends, colleagues and students. Besides the older and often legendary works (legendary because they are brought to the younger generation by the memories of the older generation) we also introduce the artist's current work with photos and text. The main theme of the exhibition Landscapes, however, is the relationship to others and showing yourself in "analog" social networking and communication.

Resumption of the second, further extended completed version of Stratil’s exhibition will, in addition, become an opportunity to release the author’s new music album "Láška" (translation note: play on words, seems to be pointing to the word ‘Love’), which was created with the contribution of the Fait Gallery. "The album „Láška“ with old as well as new songs is the second set of Stratil’s musical production.

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"It was not just a repetition of the act of usurping of the classic works and reproducing them under his own name, because objectively and for Stratil's also subjectively it could have worked just with Boštík with all aspects that this exact option has, starting with the fact that Stratil is Boštík‘s younger friend, who really loves him, despite the fact that just Boštík’s works really have the spiritual quality that makes them something extraordinary, to the the fact that Boštík is now primarily a subject of a market and a victim of our fast newly rich."1 A passage from a text by Jiří Valoch, written a year after Stratil exhibited photographic enlargements of black and white reproductions of paintings by Václav Boštík2, seems to be an appropriate introduction to the topic of the exhibition Landscapes. On the one hand Valoch mentiones basic statements that led to its organisation, but using specific examples it points out the layers of meaning, which in our case, are specifically because of the chosen concept, suppressed. The semantic and contextual diversity of Stratil‘s works here is suppressed by the conceptual key of the exhibition, which is observing the artist's creative approach to other people and their work.

Should the key fulfil its purpose, it is necessary for it to unlock the room, or at least the door of the house. At the exhibition, where we, next to Boštík‘s reproductions, present a photo album from the second half of the nineties, in which Stratil handled the personal and family history in different ways, or album created by his father and exhibited by the artist as ready-made, but also for example the "mutual monochromes" with Jan Nálevka from the end of the same decade or recent, partner-painted paintings with Martin Helán, however, we can still trace Stratil’s continuous interest in "authorial connection". Provided Jiří Valoch in his text says that the usurpation could work just with Boštík,3 he covers the aspects of intimacy and intensity that Stratil is attracted to in the long term. If we mention, for example, "stealing" of the principle of symmetrical portraits from the photo collection by Jiří David Hidden forms (1991-1995) and their use for self-portraits (1998)4, or the colouring in of his father's teaching tables (Latin, 2009), a strong personal relationship was always a fundamental dimension which preceded the creation of such works. The variable in this direction was (and remains) only the level of articulation of the relationship and of course the role of collective work, citation or appropriation in the context of contemporary theoretical debates. Should his works, in the nineties, be seen as a commentary on the identity of the image and the importance of authorship, or as movements in quadrature proximity-distance-originality-non originality, ie within the intellectual horizons of this phase of Czech post-modernism, with the transition into the new millennium there has been increasingly promoted the perspective of personal involvement.

Stratil‘s motive may be based on the relation to another person, but also on a specific artistic collection or an individual art piece. It can not be strange to him, it must catch him, he must be interested, or at least be irritatred. "The combination of modernism and postmodernism," thus happens somehow unusually - as calling the personal commitment and intimacy back into the spotlight.

The title of this exhibition is derived from a photo collection Czech landscape (1998-1999)5. That was arranged by Stratil as a map of his professional partners and friends. If these photos appear alongside other series, such as photographic Couples (2002-2003 and 2015-2016), we want to emphasise this very level of personal maps. The thoroughness and persistence of drawing through out is the first aspect that does not have a competition in the Czech art scene. The second and even more important aspect for us, is the increasing need for an intense relationship. Without wanting to prefer its psychological interpretation, we need to realise that we see Stratil as a solitaire focused mainly on the investigation of himself. The exhibition Landscapes does not deny this dimension of his artistic work, but reminds us of the importance of establishing a relationship and its public manifestation of a coherent and distinct line within his work. I would not be surprised, however, if you would have, besides intellectual game, passion, humor or pathos, also noticed loneliness that fatally follows those who so strongly urge for the other person.

1. Valoch, Jiří: The art combining modernism and postmodernism. In: Daněk, Ladislav (ed.): Václav Stratil / Drawings 1955-2000. Olomouc Art Museum, Olomouc 2000, pp. 65.

2. Václav Stratil. Collective exhibition, Nová síň Gallery, Prague 1997.

3. Also important was the resemblance of the enlarged reproductions of Boštík’s pictures with Stratil’s ink cross-hatching drawings from the second half of the 80s.

4. Václav Stratil. Hidden forms. Behémót Gallery, Prague, 1998.

5. In the enlargements of the publicly presented one only once so far – at the exhibition with the same name in Malá galerie Galerie Rudolfinum in Prague (1999).

T: Jiří Ptáček

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