Here’s something new for the new year: a series of articles in collaboration with the Karpuchina Gallery. These articles are also featured in their magazine, The KG Issue. Here is the first one—a review of an exhibition showcasing paintings by Julius Reichel.

Julius Reichel

Sorry it was quick, but I’m in hell

Julius Reichel is an elemental artist known for his interventions in public spaces and his strong painting gestures with graffiti elements. For the exhibition in Kroměříž, he painted a series of heads, eyes, and individualities. He devoted himself to this work during the Autumn when he started to lead the painting studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.

The exact format of the paintings and the subject matter might suggest that wildness and diversity might 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 after being among the paintings for an extended period. Like memes, slogans, sounds, and 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 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. To make the tourist feel comfortable and feel that they got what they wanted for their travel efforts and money, we rearranged the lives of the locals for a few minutes and stripped the dishes on offer of all suspicious spices. This text is prefaced by the author’s answers to the most straightforward question we can ask an artist when we stand before his work: And what is this about? The last message came in a text after I left the studio: Sorry it was quick, but I’m having hell.

Text by David Korecký, photo by Miracles Above the Clouds.

Julius Reichel – Sorry it was quick, but I’m in hell
12.1.- 28.3.2024, Pekelné sáně Gallery, Kroměříž
Curator: David Korecký

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

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