The fifth room of the exhibition Signal III, already from a distance when walking through the narrow corridor, shines with white purity, as directly in the view stands the white-glowing sculpture The Fall II by Stanislav Kolíbal. Once you enter the room, you find yourself in the supposed "Glass House", which was jointly created by curator David Voda and exhibition architect Mark Ther. Everything is wrapped in soft, light and breathable curtains. Behind them lies true beauty. Just pull them open slightly and our eyes rest on abstract works of Czechoslovak Constructivism and Concretism, mostly from the 1960s-1980s.
From the flat paintings of past decades, we are moving to distinctly sculptural works, both sculptural and painterly. The abstraction of form, geometric stylization and the search for a constructive gaze are all seen in the work of Hugo Demartini, Juraj Bartusz and František Kyncl. An unforgettable experience after one of the curtains is opened is the painting behind the glass - La forme du bleu by František Kupka. This classic work by Kupka from the 1920s in blue and black dominates the entire bright space, and although it is placed behind transparent glass, it is also hidden behind a veil of mist. We are in the "Glass Room" after all.
As curator David Voda writes: "Everything has come to the point where it seems that future art, whether it is called Concretism or Abstract Expressionism, will be merely non-representational. André Breton's dream of living in a glass house, sleeping on a glass bed and covering himself with a glass sheet has come true."
Eduardo Antal's painting, on the other hand, is devoid of all colour tones and concentrates on the clean constructivist line of a white surface on a white ground. The works of yet unnamed artists such as Radoslav Kratina, Jiří Hilmar, Jan Kubíček and Pavel Maňka, at the same time as those already mentioned - Hugo Demartini, Juraj Bartusz, František Kyncl and Stanislav Kolíbal - complete the whole space in monochromatic tones of white, black and silver.
By Tereza Holoubková / Telegraph Gallery
Photo: Matěj Doležel
