Exhibition Opening
Words of Dalibor Chatrný

You are warmly invited to the opening of the exhibition Words of Dalibor Chatrný, which will take place on Tuesday, 28 April 2026, at 18:00 at the Brno House of Arts. The exhibition will be introduced by the director of the Brno House of Arts, Terezie Petišková, and the curator Alena Pomajzlová. The opening will also include an exhibition talk.

Simultaneously, the exhibition Distorted Image. Chapters from the Beginnings of Video Art will be officially presented.

PROGRAM

18:00 – Introduction of the exhibitions by the director of the Brno House of Arts, Terezie Petišková, together with curators Alena Pomajzlová and Lenka Dolanová
18:30 – Performance by Peter Rónai – autoReverse 1
18:45 – Televize Amalgam (Josef Daněk and Blahoslav Rozbořil)
19:00 – Exhibition talk of Words of Dalibor Chatrný with curator Alena Pomajzlová
19:30 – Exhibition talk of Distorted Image with curator Lenka Dolanová and participating artists
20:00 – Concert by Pomalé prostředky (Stanislav Filip and collaborators)
20:30 – Vernissage
22:00 – End of the event

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Dalibor Chatrný’s work is exceptional in Czech art for its scope, experimental approaches, search for new paths, and the way it poses both artistic and philosophical questions. This exhibition focuses on a specific set of works from the late 1960s, generally referred to as word works. In these, Chatrný explored issues of words, language, meanings, the relationship between signifier and signified, and the connections between verbal and visual communication.

Unlike strictly conceptual artists who dismissed aesthetics, Chatrný remained a painter and placed great emphasis on the visual form of his word works, considering color, expressive handwriting, and gesture. He was interested not only in the meaning of words but also in the structure of texts, translating them into a visual language and finding significance in the visual composition of textually guided abstract elements. His exploration of verbal signs combined with visual elements opened new ways of perception and demonstrated possibilities for entirely new interpretations, addressing broader questions. Through the breadth of his inquiry, Chatrný greatly enriched Czech visual art.

The exhibition, presented as the final event in the Dalibor Chatrný 100 series, draws on the research of curator Alena Pomajzlová, recently published in Seeing and/or Reading: Chapters on the Relationship of Image and Word in Modern Art.

Photo: Dalibor Chatrný, Jan Skácel