Matyáš Maláč, Matěj Olmer

NO HEAVEN NO HELL

Dec 9, 2016 — Jan 5, 2017
Opening Friday 9. December 2016 19:00

Curator:
Alexandra Karpuchina

“No heaven, no hell. After all, they are just categories through which we define abstract sensations of pleasure or rejection. Imagine what a world without good and evil would look like, that moves in the vacuum of prenatal purity in which an individual finds themselves before birth, in some kind of a biological matrix of paradise where they are enveloped in a cellulose of safety and nutrition. Maybe we would have to invent a struggle of good and evil on a linear timeline. Since both arise with the recognition of the vulnerability of the human individual. With a demonstrable intervention of thinking that depends on causality. However, Matěj Olmer and Matyáš Maláč have created a world of concentrated contents. It is not evident in their works if it is possible in heaven to experience moments of good and in hell the timelessness of evil. They come with a very individualised style as a peculiar mental footprint. With Matěj the worthlessness of human junk (often expressed through a pasted-in collage intervention) combines with nobility and beauty on the background of a universe of many dimensions, while Matyáš, through a model of an abstract language, refers to the spiritual trajectory of old masters. He opens a dialogue with Velasquez’s refined compositional puzzles to understand for himself the emotional thinking of the past, which is much closer to us all through personal experience.

The exhibition of Matyáš Maláč and Matěj Olmer comes with a rare dialogue of permeating freedom in the artistic expression of two friends whose language is the abstract form. With bated breath we can observe the mysterious depths of two different universes where in captivating colours (that are softer in Matyáš’s paintings than the vivacious colours in Matěj’s) a process of birth and destruction takes place. Dynamic painting gestures allow the spectators to penetrate and experience together with the artists the joy of painting, its matter in which primarily an everyday ability of intoxicating hedonism of very simple rituals is born. Matěj Olmer in his poetical works, with no less poetic names like “An orange burning world is reflected in the golden surface of a lamp”, traces the nothingness of the futile human existence and shows it to itself in many ways by means of illusory tools of delusion. He lets the world fall on himself and supports it as an atlas. In his present and more compact cycle Matyáš Maláč frees himself of his former entropies that were close to the Chilean Roberto Matta and captures the state of disorder with its principles of an order. One would feel in this exhibition as though painting was a divine inspiration and human imagination a painful obstacle that lead to knowledge. Both artists imperceptibly influence and study each other and also plunge into the depths of hell because it is the only place where they can find true purity and grace of the white pearl.” – Patrik Šimon