TOMÁŠ SVOBODA / ONE SECOND IN THE LIFE OF JULIA ROBERTS

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.

TOMÁŠ SVOBODA / ONE SECOND IN THE LIFE OF JULIA ROBERTS

02.11.2012 - 01.12.2012

Fait Gallery MEM
Božetěchova Street 1 (entrance from Metodějova Street), Brno
02/11 – 1/12/2012
Opening: 1/11/2012 at 7pm
Curator: Jiří Ptáček

Tomáš Svoboda chose one second of the film with the American actress Julia Roberts and spread it to 25 separate images. He proceeded from the most common frame frequency used in film and television and he dissected the transient moment of one second, which is so short to which under normal circumstances nobody pays the slightest attention, into basic visual elements, as if it was possible to see two adjacent layers of the actress’s existence – Julie Roberts in the role of the second Julia Roberts “per se“.

Tomáš Svoboda belongs to an informal circle of artists using methods and means of expression of other disciplines. He oscillates between literature, stage design and film and combines them the most consistently in gallery installations focused on alternative forms of narration. He always maintains economy of means of expression and the model quality; he often works with curt, descriptive texts and their simple composition. The installation is completed with fragments of three-dimensional set pieces or architectural structures that refer to ephemeral structures in film and television studios.

Also in the spatial installation called Jedna vteřina života Julie Roberts / One second in the life of Julia Roberts we can find a number of the above-mentioned elements. Instead of narration, however, the main attention is focused on the specific existential duplication of an actor. Despite the performed anatomical study, the “fiction“ and the “non-fiction“ remain inseparable substances. Experiment – if it ever was an experiment – failed. To a scientist, such findings could cause a significant damage to his confidence and undermine his mental balance. To the contrary, for an artist, it could mean a poetic potential. Emptied space is filled with experience of different perception of an image which were flowing and now don’t flow anymore, a story which is necessary to put together piece by piece as a puzzle from each image and the time that began to expand, despite its original insipidity.

Jiří Ptáček

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