Thinking through Images The Visual Events of Miroslav Petříček 4. 10. 2023 – 28. 1. 2024
Curator: Jitka Hlaváčková
Miroslav Petříček is a leading Czech philosopher and aesthetician who has been systematically reflecting on visual art for decades. He has summarised his thoughts on aspects of the language of art in a number of texts, including his book Thinking through Images, which became the main stimulus for this exhibition. Our most important aim is to highlight Miroslav Petříček’s fundamental contribution to the development of Czech visual art and to attempt to illustrate the key ideas underlying his philosophical discourse. The basis is his statement that an encounter with an image is an event.
Artists: Karima Al-Mukhtarová, Ateliér radostné tvorby (Marie Kúsová, Lukáš Paleček, Vojtěch Proske, George Radojčić), Zbyněk Baladrán, Mária Bartuszová, Jana Bernartová, Rudolf Fila, Tomáš Hlavina, Václav Janoščík and Adam Trbušek, Magdalena Jetelová, Magdaléna Kašparová, Michal Kindernay, Julie Kopová, Zdeněk Košek, Tom Kotik, Eva Koťátková, Václav Krůček, Kristina Láníková, Jiří Matějů, Maxmilián Aron Mootz,
Pavel Mrkus, Jiří Načeradský and Jaroslav Nešetřil, Jaromír Novotný, Milan Paštéka, Ondřej Přibyl, Jiří Skála, Kateřina Šedá, Miloš Šejn, Adriena Šimotová, Josef Šmíd, Kateřina Štenclová, Dagmar Šubrtová, Eva Vápenková, Vladimíra and Miroslava Večeřovy, Martin Velíšek, Petr Veselý, Lenka Vítková, Martin Zet
The exhibition’s form is to a great extent determined by the selection of works by artists about whom Petříček previously wrote in his texts. The main idea behind the exhibition was the presupposition that an encounter with an image is primarily a VISUAL EVENT. We seek to emphasize that the languages of words and of images are closely related but that their material is different: an image or expression cannot be simply translated into words or concepts. An image does not show; it causes something. It is more than an illustration, nor is it a mere visual mediator of an idea; it is a specific way of inciting the mind to think of what has been painted. THINKING THROUGH THE IMAGE is a response to the encounter with a visual event.
For this reason, our exhibition has replaced explanatory commentary with a spatial concept capable of bringing body and mind together. The architecture creates an immersive environment into which one can delve physically. It also produces transitive places – views that offer a space for various forms of encounter and reflection. The exhibition guides the viewer through a labyrinth of visual events, from abstract sensory percepts via the search for shapes and concepts all the way to the construction of an idea: from the mysterious interface between chaos and order or light and darkness to metaimages of the contemporary world. The exhibition space has also been structured using IN-BETWEEN spaces that form frameworks, transitions, and boundaries in which viewers try to find their own POSITION towards a work and in which the shadow and echo of philosophers’ words immanently hover.
We would like for the exhibition to become a SPACE FOR JOYFUL THINKING that presents viewers with a visual event in the form of a transformative aesthetic experience inciting the emotions, the imagination, and ideas – the kind of experience felt by the organizing team while planning this exhibition.
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication with texts by Miroslav Petříček, Jitka Hlaváčková, Václav Janoščík, Milena Bartlová and Jiří Přibáň.
