Sorry It Was Quick but I'm in Hell - Pekelné Sáně Gallery by Julius Reichel 12.1.2024 - 28.3.2024Curator: David Korecký

Text

Ego
Figure
Portrait
Contrast
Up up up
Hourglass
Cowardly exhibit
Let them think what they want
The contrast of speed and care
I don't want to write my own story
Freedom, it's hard to use words like that

Julius Reichel is an elemental artist known for his interventions in public spaces and his strong painting gesture with graffiti elements. For Pekelné Sáně Gallery he painted a series of heads, eyes, individualities. He devoted himself to this work during the autumn, when he began to lead the painting studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. The same format of the paintings and subject matter might suggest that wildness and diversity may be hidden in the second plan, beyond what we can measure and describe technically. The contrast of the painterly disjointedness, the uniform format of the canvases and the careful execution of gestural and seemingly random strokes can only be enjoyed by the visitor when he is among the paintings for a longer period of time. Like memes, slogans, sounds, messages picked up on the street - the longer one walks through the same place, the more one discovers that every corner of the city and landscape has its own rules, laws and sense of the whole world - and existential significance for its local inhabitants. It is difficult to find a principle by which to present the author's messages about the world and himself to the uninitiated visitor in a way that does not betray the dense and volatile content by simplifying the form. Perhaps by any arrangement we would be deceiving, building a backdrop for tourists who get a glimpse of someone's authentic life somewhere in distant lands. And to make the tourist feel comfortable and feel that he got what he wanted for his travel efforts and money, we rearrange the lives of the locals for a few minutes and strip the dishes on offer of all suspicious spices. This text is prefaced by the author's answers to the simplest question we can ask an artist when we stand in front of his work: and what is it about? The last message came by text after I left the studio: Sorry it was quick but I'm in hell.

– David Korecký