Simona Mehnert, Tomáš Pospiszyl

Line as Dynamic Color Interference

The art-keen public in the Czech Republic has a chance to visit a new exhibition again: This time it is Petr Kvíčala introducing a collection of his new paintings at the National Gallery. Some of them were created during the middle of the last year and some of them were actually conceived directly for the space of the so-called Small Atrium of the Trade Fair Palace. The paintings further explore Kvíčala´s main theme-colored lines painted on the white surface of the canvas. This time, however, he focuses on working with large formats, which is a consequential topic that has been occupying the artist´s mind for some time now. In the past, there were a couple of chances to see those works of Kvíčala that are of a monumental character, but they were always exhibited as single pieces (which have, however, certainly proven that the large scale presents the perfect opportunity for the artist to fully extend his capabilities; and this should not be understood as some kind of common feature, on the contrary, it is a rather rare talent!).

Kvíčala´s consequential solution of the large-format paintings is undoubtedly related to the space in which he exhibits his latest collection; when the exhibition space is monumental it clearly invites Kvíčala to hold a dialogue with its architecture: Last year, it was the building of the Volkswagen Car Forum in the center of Berlin (his first solo exhibition in Germany) and now the dialogue takes place in the Small Atrium of the Trade Fair Palace.

Both of the buildings which house these spaces are truly remarkable structures of their time; the Trade Fair Palace is a product of Prague functionalist architecture, and the Car Forum is one of the first structures that was built during the recent construction wave which started in Berlin during the 1990s. Moreover, the interiors of both buildings have a similar character: the exhibition space is located in a great, open, atrium-like hall situated on the ground floor of the building and opens way up inside it, which means that the works can "radiate" out from the canvas into the vast upward-gaping room.

Obviously, this aspect must be especially interesting for someone like Petr Kvíčala, who, not only likes to examine the ways an art piece works in a specific architectural environment, but who also enjoys collaborating with architects and, who, in fact, regularly does so.

The decisive factor is, in this case, the moment of segmentation (i.e. layout) of the architectonic space, determined by the way its horizontal and vertical lines meet and/or collide, by their mutual ambiguous relationships and by their overall balance.

The key supporting components of Kvíčala´s paintings are lines too; the lines are wide and in color, their shapes being precisely defined and clearly organized on the surface of the painting. The lines within a painting form their own order, though. It is an order that does not copy the right angles rhythmically repeated in the surrounding architecture but, instead, one that beats with its own rhythm dictated by the lines working in various different directions. Here, the lines feel like some kind of intensive strokes (or acts) carried out in color, dynamically cutting through the painting´s canvases and further intervening with the surrounding space (i.e. its architecture) through the collective power of their tempo, force and the imminent impact of the energy potential held by the colors.

The artist´s strong personality is visibly present in the paintings; and so is his will to produce compelling works of art, which would be able not only to assert itself in a space both monumental and open, but also to fill it with its intense energy.

Kvíčala´s absolute concentration on the elementary form of the line is an obvious effort to rid himself of all that is unimportant and secondary. His compositions clearly reflect the idea of focusing fully on the essential. At the same time, though, the character of his paintings seems to be positive, in fact, it often feels joyful or even playful. Still, the paintings display a sense for plain purity, harmony and nobility, while combining intellect and intuition with sensuality and emotion. Moreover, they speak of a desire for internal freedom and of orientation towards universal values.

Simona Mehnert

Ultimately, however, line became an art form in and of itself and was used without direct reference to any particular model in nature. Since, of course, not just any irregular scribble can claim to be an art form, linear shapes were made to obey the fundamental artistic laws of symmetry and rhythm. As a result, straight lines became triangles, squares, rhombuses, zigzag patterns, etc., while curved lines produced circles, undulating lines, and spirals.

Petr Kvíčala´s Invisible Ornament

I
Those observers who have been following the work of Petr Kvíčala for some time now, may still be hesitant about the type of artist they are dealing with: Is he dogmatically consistent, or is he the very opposite, i.e. someone who is indefatigably playful in his work?

Petr Kvíčala has been continually working on a unique project - an uninterrupted series of paintings with an intelligible genealogy and clear set of rules - for more than a decade. He works with the simplest ornament, consisting of wavy lines, broken arches or loops; his paintings are the result of "forming the inner order of a painting by the means of an ornamental arrangement of geometric elements". It becomes apparent at first view, that the artist achieves an unusually wide spectrum of results and effects in spite of limiting his means of expression to a minimum, simply by repeated use of the same elements both in his paintings and spatial installations.

Kvíčala´s approach, i.e. his consistent conceptualization of painting, without which he would have never been able to continue in his cultivation of one single principle, is rather atypical in the Czech context . It is a lucky symbiosis in which he produces paintings that are at the same time rational and also work with the public, while promoting the legacy of the modernist painting of the second half of the 20th century. His work represents both conceptualism and "pure" visual qualities.

Kvíčala´s manner of painting has lately been attaining a more and more painterly style, aestheticism and sensual features. The last of his thus far exhibited series of paintings - shown first in Berlin and now also in Prague - captures the viewer especially due to the large size of the pieces, only emphasizing its sensory power.

Similarly to the previous process paintings, this set is also sensual and spectacular (in a good sense). These paintings are hardly just some kind of graphic diagrams or charts created by a mere mechanical expansion of motifs whose concepts had already been completely worked out on a sheet of paper taken from a note pad. The precisely chosen size of these paintings and their final execution in color are the key factors in the resulting effect. Both the viewer’s eye and body are confronted with a ratio, the material and the size of the individual paintings. The observer relates to them as to some kind of two-dimensional architecture, as to minimalist objects.

II
" Does the ornament have a history?" was the rhetorical question asked by Alois Riegl more than a hundred years ago in his book Problems of Style. His impetus for this book came from (a) his study of ancient ornaments conducted over many years, and (b) - even more importantly - from a polemic that he led with the architect and art historian Gottfried Semper and his students. The latter mentioned group derived the shape of historical ornaments from the materials and technology used in the process of their creation. In their opinion, for example, the manner of weaving and the threads used played the main role in the final look of the concrete textile ornament. Unlike them, Alois Riegl claimed that the ornament develops according to its own logic, i.e. that it has a history independent of the used material and/or technology. In his view, the ornament was not primarily predestined by the technological processes of ancient men, but rather by a fondness for evenly organized lines and their own artistic will. This would necessarily lead to the conclusion that the ornament, just as the whole of fine arts, has its own individual laws of progress and therefore also its own history.

During the 19th century and more so at the beginning of the 20th century, the ornament was placed at the center of research of fine arts methodology, for it was perceived as a basic element of fine art. Art scientists believed that once they understood its essence and development, they would discover a way to understand all art, similarly to the way the splitting of the atom could throw light on the secrets of matter. The origin of the ornament and the origin of fine art were seen to be located in immediate mutual proximity; the ornament representing the outcome of an instinctive force, which lies behind the original impulse for creating art.

The ornament played a similarly important role even in the development of the then-forming modern art: It was understood as a demonstration of primitivism, being the exemplary product of the "natural artist". Archeological findings of the time proved that the ornament really belongs among the oldest demonstrations of art; it definitely existed in the Paleolithic era and occurred in virtually every subsequent historical period.

At the same time, however, its geometric laws, as well as its abstract nature, put the ornament in the most current context of up-to-date art of the beginning of the 20th century. We may say that the ornament has been the abstracted experience of anti-academism, and/or the expression of a protest against classic European painting from the Renaissance to today.

Petr Kvíčala, today, is also perceived as an artist producing a sort of pre-paintings, as the type of creator of art who attempts to reach the essence of the creative process.

Gauguin´s journeys to the Pacific or Picasso´s interpretations of African masks were by no means a retrograde or reactionary view taken up against the flow of the art stream; no, they were primarily courageous attempts made towards locating the foundations of artistic language as well as new original ways. A hundred-year-old polemic about the possibility of the ornament having its own historical development seems to have a very clear outcome in Petr Kvíčala´s paintings. Even an unvarying and perpetual ornament is nothing more than history in movement, the constantly changing stream of change stemming from the logic of the ornament as such.

III
The abstract nature of the ornament becomes apparent simply by considering the fact that the ornament in pure form does not actually imitate nature. Still, it is governed by the laws of nature, its model being the perpetually repeated movement of waves, the rhythm of breathing, and the regular switching of night and day. The impetus for the creation of the ornament is not the desire to depict nature but the will to understand nature and to produce and abstract geometrical patterning derived from nature. Similarly, even Kvíčala´s stubborn exploration of the ornament can be understood as an effort to disclose the possibilities of fine art in its most concentrated form.

The ornament is, due to its nature, two-dimensional - a means for filling out an area that is given beforehand. Flatness is at the same time one of the attributes of modernist painting; it is a necessary step on the way to abstract art. Nor do the paintings of Petr Kvíčala offer a special illusion built using the means of traditional painting techniques. Everything that happens in them takes place in the two-dimensional world of the canvas. The possible overlapping of elements does not create space but a blanket network - a mutually balanced two-dimensional field. Apart from one of Kvíčala´s paintings, which is organized alongside an endless horizontal line, all the other paintings produce rippled planes charged with energy.

Lately, however, the solid field, employing symmetry and regular rhythm, has begun to give way to the mere fragment in the paintings of Petr Kvíčala. The painter separates the basic component of the ornament, or even its mere segment, from its continuation, takes it out from its logical chain, handling it as an independent, separate element. Some of the artist´s recent paintings thus give the impression that they are just cutouts of his previous works; they show just a detail of an ornament, which may not even give the impression that it is part of a patterned structure. The observer may only speculate about the inner workings of the displayed elements, about the way they could exist beyond the edge of the painting, about their rhythm and order. These carefully chosen details selected from the whole universe represent chaos organized only in the mind of the observer, but not before.

Tomáš Pospiszyl