MILAN GRYGAR A DANIEL VLČEK: RENDERING | exhibition

ExhibitionCella Gallery and Hovorny, Opava

MILAN GRYGAR A DANIEL VLČEK: RENDERING
12. 12. 2025 – 19. 2. 2026
Galerie Cella, Matiční 4, Opava

curator: Jakub Frank
collaboration: Antonín Gazda

The exhibition opening will take place on Friday, 12 December, at 6 pm and will include a musical performance by Lucie Vítková/Luc Vitk and Jess Robinson, who will present their own interpretations of Milan Grygar’s scores.

Galerie Cella concludes the second year of its exhibition cycle dedicated to pioneers of sound art with an exhibition of Milan Grygar and Daniel Vlček. The two artists, separated by two generations, share an interest in the relationship between seeing and hearing – the interplay between image and sound, and the temporality inherent in the pictorial work.

The exhibition will present a selection of Milan Grygar’s paintings from the 1980s – a period during which his focus on the relationship between coloured surface, geometric construction, and sound becomes fully articulated. For the exhibition, Daniel Vlček has prepared an installation composed of paintings and a chromoscope – a device designed to translate colour information from a painting into a sound composition.

The exhibition title refers to interpretation – the performing or realization of a musical composition that may emerge from reading a painting as a score – but also to the temporality of the image, which is strongly present in the work of both artists. The painter seems to accompany the viewer; the viewer seems to linger before the painting; the painting itself seems to endure.

Milan Grygar (*1926) has been exploring the interconnection of sound and image since the mid-1960s, when he first noticed the sounds produced by pencil, charcoal, or wooden sticks drawing on paper and began recording them on magnetic tape. The relationship between seeing and hearing subsequently became the central theme and philosophy of his work. Grygar’s 1970 exhibition at the House of Art, at whose opening he live-soundtracked the creation of his spatial scores, can be regarded as the first exhibition of sound art in Czechoslovakia. Sound and musical thinking continue to inform his painting practice to this day, as he moves from linearly constructed works and minimalist surfaces – scores offering the possibility of musical interpretation – back to simple, repetitive gestures that revisit principles from the 1960s.

Daniel Vlček (*1978) likewise explores the relationship between the pictorial plane, colour, and geometric form on one hand, and sound, its propagation, acoustic qualities, and physical effects on the other. His primary source of inspiration lies in the exploration of sound and music. As a musician and producer of the digital generation, he approaches his painterly compositions as fragments of musical pieces in which various frequencies or layers of sound intersect, overlap upon the canvas, and form richly layered structures within a restrained colour palette. In collaboration with multimedia artist and technologist Antonín Gazda, he developed and constructed the chromoscope – a device for scanning the pictorial surface and translating it into sound. Using a camera, the device captures details of the painting, analyses their colour values, and converts them into a sound composition that resonates through the gallery.

The exhibition at Galerie Cella continues a cycle dedicated to pioneers and early experimenters in the field of sound art. The first exhibition introduced Milan Knížák as an author of sound performances, scores, and objects. Subsequent exhibitions presented international artists such as Hans Peter Kuhn, Peter Ablinger, Katalin Ladik, Paul Panhuysen, Milan Adamčiak, Rolf Julius, and Phill Niblock. In 2026, the programme will feature, for instance, the German artist Christina Kubisch and the Belgian artist Aernoudt Jacobs.

We thank Museum Kampa – The Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation, the 8smička Foundation, Humpolec, the Olomouc Museum of Art, and Mr Luděk Rýzner for the loans.

The exhibition was financially supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the Statutory City of Opava.