Martin Vongrej / The quality of light from a divided sphere and the quality of rotating light

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.

Martin Vongrej / The quality of light from a divided sphere and the quality of rotating light

23.02.2022 - 14.05.2022

Fait Gallery PREVIEW, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno

Curator: Jiří Ptáček

Opening: 23. 2. 2022, 7 pm

In his native Slovakia, Martin Vongrej's creative strategies are perceived as a distinctive continuation of the local characteristics of conceptual art of the second half of the 20th century. Vongrej's ability to draw on a meticulously thought-out programme that ascends from the human subject to cosmic heights (and from there – pulled by gravity, enriched and expanded - descends again to the human ;evel) places his work alongside the most remarkable artistic concepts his predecessors have left us. In his conception, a work of art is inserted between the human senses and the surrounding world, visualizing the present (physical and spiritual) principles while stimulating their direct experiencing.

The core of the exhibition in the Fait Gallery is formed by Vongrej's new paintings. They are among the most subtle the artist has created, and obviously invite aesthetic contemplation. In the paintings, coloured points are placed between parallel and intersecting lines making up constellations in which the points are either separated or grouped together. We also see points of the same colour shade in sets and rows wedged into each other. Elements of asymmetry are masterfully woven into the symmetries of geometrical compositions. In the intentions of Vongrej's artistic work, the perception of all relationships is intrinsically linked to the processes of unconscious decision-making and our ability to comprehend them, including the paradoxes inherent in them. Is it possible, for example, to "see" symmetry and asymmetry at the same time? Is it possible to perceive points as separate and connected at the same time? Under these circumstances, a kind of "quantization game" takes place between seeing and thinking, in which one cannot actually perceive both, but only arrive at one qualitatively different result at any given moment, while being aware of both.

In connection with light, the theme of "qualitative difference" also features in the title of the exhibition. Martin Vongrej has previously worked with the paradox of a rotating mirror whose movement is not reflected on its surface, and we are thus unable to observe it. The illusion created is naturally not an empty optical charade but a meaning-inducing component accompanying the relations between the seen and thought, the realised. The moment we know that something is moving underneath an image yet the image is not responding to it properly, we can experience a certain doubling of the meaning of the observed phenomenon. This is also the case with the circular lights that the artist has placed in his new exhibition. In these, too, photons disregard the movement or immobility of the source, so we are unable to notice any qualitative difference sensorically. But since we are able to be aware of it, we must relate the term "qualitative" to the unit of the seeing and thinking recipient.

Unlike mirrors, however, Vongrej's circular lights contribute to the illumination of the surrounding space and objects in it. As light sources, they are a condition of vision, but their position in space, or the range, intensity and inclination of their rays, co-determine what we see and how we see it.

It might follow from the above how important a role participating (!) observers play in these systems. Vongrej's exhibitions operate with a kind of active situatedness. They emphasize that we are surrounded and drawn into newly created relations as perceiving, thinking and acting "points" in space and time. However, they extend from the factual experience we gain at a specific venue of the exhibition to the extra-artistic and extra-gallery reality, the “out there”. Each of Vongrej's exhibitions thus takes on a model-like quality which contains the laws that track our experience in imaginarily separate spheres of interpersonal sharing, earthly nature closest to our physical existence and its (only more distant from man) cosmic extension.

Text: Jiří Ptáček

Supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council.

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