CHRISTIAN WEIDNER / VINCENT BAUER / CORNELIA LEIN / HERE AND SOMEWHERE ELSE

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.

CHRISTIAN WEIDNER / VINCENT BAUER / CORNELIA LEIN / HERE AND SOMEWHERE ELSE

05.04.2012 - 17.05.2012

Fait Gallery MEM

Božetěchova Street 1 (entrance from Metodějova Street), Brno

Opening: 5/4/2012 at 7pm

Curator: Martin Nytra

The motif of the exhibition of Christian Weidner, Vincent Bauer and Cornelia Lein is the source, starting point, complex phenomenon, human being and the basic element of matter in interaction with the world, of which each of them creates their own idea. They influence it and what they receive is constantly being evaluated, depending on situation in which they currently are. In the case of the authors themselves it is mainly self-reflection of their own work and their innate self in an environment of constant changes, stimuli, vague forms and illusions. It is also about a reflection on the nature of communication, originality, free will and sense of time throughout cooperation process. The search for the starting point of a message, the initial situation from which it arose, or the furthest point of the last recorded contact with an object; it is motivated by a desire to recognize and again to experience the taste which faded from memory.

Interaction between subjects is possible under conditions which are typical for most of the forms of cooperation. The instinct to act, intuition and conscious will to speak with the world, leading to specific changes, to the movement and the perception of time in the entire process of action as a confrontation of memory with a concept of future, taking place in a concrete situation of space. Thinking about the future, our desire is being formed; it activates our ability to construct possible scenarios and anticipate the consequences. We are aware of the fact that our speech must be articulated if we want to avoid unwanted circumstances of misunderstanding. All this is connected to the basic problem of the way and form of representation, how to express the content of our message in a way that would be understood by the viewer as well. In the distance communication there is a possible limit: blindness or mutual invisibility of a sender and a recipient. All around us there are lots of messages of unknown origin and in this situation is our ignorance, depending on a situation, extremely unfavorable. Therefore, the anonymity of the author and the unknown identity sending a signal serve as a stimulus of our natural curiosity. But there still remains the question of substance. What is the cause of interaction between world and life within?

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