27. 6. – 30. 8. 2025 Cella Gallery Opening on Friday, June 27 at 6:00 PM at Cella Gallery.

The exhibition Work (just phenomena) at Cella Gallery presents the film and musical work of composer, filmmaker, and photographer Phill Niblock (1933–2024).

“No climax, no development, no building – just phenomena.” — P. N.

Niblock’s extensive film series The Movement of People Working comprises over 25 hours of footage recorded since 1973 in countries including Peru, Mexico, Hungary, Hong Kong, Brazil, Lesotho, Portugal, China, Japan, Sumatra, and the Arctic. The unifying element across these diverse locations is the focus on basic, repetitively performed gestures of manual labor.

Originally working with 16mm color film and later using video and digital formats, Niblock’s method is consistently documentary and formally minimalist. The camera does not narrate, but observes. We watch people engaged in repetitive, often physically demanding tasks: forging, dyeing, fishing, harvesting, grinding. These scenes are presented without commentary or storyline – unfolding in real time, they draw attention to human movement and effort.

The film material is accompanied by Niblock’s typically loud musical compositions – microtonal drones created through the postproduction layering of recordings of acoustic instruments. Like the images, the music operates with subtle variation, minimal development, and dense spatiality. Yet Niblock himself considers the music more narrative than the films.

Image and sound are not synchronized in the traditional sense – instead, they exist in a free, shifting relationship. Each installation of The Movement of People Working is configured differently. The version for Cella Gallery, developed in collaboration with Niblock’s son Jasper Niblock and his partner Katherine Liberovskaya, presents a unique selection of films and compositions.

The exhibition is presented as an accompanying event to the Ostrava Days festival. During the festival (August 21–30), the gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, 9AM – 5PM.

15. 5. 2025
Cella Gallery
Matiční 4, Opava

Maria Komarova is an interdisciplinary artist whose work moves at the intersection of performance, scenography, sound art, and installation. By staging and technically transforming everyday objects, Komarova emphasizes the sonic and visual potential of the non-human world. She works with sound as a performative medium and continuously develops DIY electroacoustic objects, which temporarily inhabit the spaces of performances and installations. [https://mariakomarova.org/](https://mariakomarova.org/)

Csocsó is the electronic solo project of Brussels-based percussionist Daniel Dariel (also a member of Umarell & Zdaura, Wash Club, and Edibles), in which he condenses his many years of recordings using a sampler. The project aims to produce its own digital spaces where objects of sonic memory can be reformed, evolving into “a framework full of thickening textures and loosely bound rhythms. It sounds like a transformation into a machine that stutters, moves, dances, awakens, and collapses.” (OCCII, Amsterdam) [https://csocso.bandcamp.com/](https://csocso.bandcamp.com/)

Cella Gallery 17. 4. – 19. 6. 2025

Curator: Jakub Frank
In collaboration with: Maija Julius

When Rolf Julius first exhibited his photographic series Deichlinie (Dike Line) accompanied with recorded sound in 1980, he proposed a remarkable connection between the visible and the audible—a connection that became a central motif of his work and introduced a new sensitivity to what we call klangkunst, sound art, or sonic art in its various forms. The horizon shifts subtly in the individual photographs of Deichlinie, but remains static—until the sound of gentle ringing, first from the left speaker and then from the right, adds an illusion of movement to the work.

The relationship between the visual and the aural in Julius’s work is not one of synesthetic transfer in the style of early modernism, nor is it purely conceptual—a transfer between the seen and the thought. Rather, his work aligns with contemporary reflections on sound, silence, and everything in between, as formulated by John Cage, La Monte Young, and Morton Feldman. Julius’s intermediality lies in his ability to perceive sound as a visual material—with its own shape, structure, color, surface, hardness, or size—or as a space with its own expanse, depth, and atmosphere.

In his art, Julius was capable of becoming objects, environments, or colors. He could recognize the sound carried within a stone and translate it into a musical composition that seemed to emanate from within the stone itself. He succeeded in making places in the landscape resonate in such a way that they became music. In his installations, yellow sounded yellow and red sounded red—whether in our ears or just in our minds.

Music [under your feet] is the first exhibition of Rolf Julius in the Czech Republic. Yet traces of his presence can be found elsewhere. In the archive of Jiří Valoch are several works Julius gifted to Valoch and Milan Knížák. Knížák also writes (admiringly) of his encounter with Julius and his work in his memoirs. In 1982, at a time when Julius was still exploring the possibilities of a new artistic language, he performed in Brno at Valoch’s invitation, also presenting several of his drawings. It was here that Valoch introduced him to the then-emerging Brno art scene. One of Julius’s works is part of the Lidice Memorial collection, having entered it through the efforts of curator René Block in the late 1990s. A Czech translation of Julius’s key text Rooms of Stillness was published in 2023 in the exhibition catalogue Sites of Reverberation at 8smička.

The Deichlinie series, Julius’s first sound-based work, was exhibited in 1980 at Für Augen und Ohren, the most important sound art exhibition up to that time. Amidst a range of strong voices—sound conceptualists, performers, makers of sound objects and technological installations—Julius, then an emerging artist, could easily have been overlooked. Yet Deichlinie, for those paying close attention, must have already stood out for its quiet distinctiveness. Forty-five years later, we present the piece in Cella Gallery alongside other works from the 1980s and 1990s, illustrating the evolution of Julius’s practice—from works that explore the mutual influence of the visual and the auditory, through the “small sounds” embodied in tiny sound-producing objects, to his iconic hanging speakers.

All the works were selected in collaboration with the artist’s daughter Maija Julius, who manages the estate Rolf Julius and is responsible for the proper presentation of his work. We thank her sincerely for her invaluable collaboration and for the care and dedication she continues to give to Rolf Julius’s legacy.

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

MILAN ADAMČIAK: LABOURS OF SISYPHUS
Galerie Cella
February 14 – April 3, 2025
Curator: Lucia Gregorová Stach

The opening will take place on Friday, February 14, at Galerie Cella, with the curator in attendance.

In 2025, we continue our series of exhibitions dedicated to leading sound artists who have influenced the field of sound art not only through their artistic or compositional work but also by promoting awareness through organizational and academic activities.

The exhibition Milan Adamčiak: Labours of Sisyphus at the Bludný kámen Gallery in Opava offers a probe into the multifaceted creative universe of one of the most interesting (Czech)Slovak neo-avant-garde artists. Milan Adamčiak (Ružomberk 1946 – Banská Belá 2017) was a musicologist, artist, performer, and polymath who combined music, visual art, philosophy, literature, and performance into a distinctive, experimental vision that challenged conventional forms of artistic creation in a unique way. He built his multimedia programme on “Sisyphean work” with everyday objects, images, and sounds, transforming the mundane into the extraordinary, everyday situations into moments of discovery. His original DIY musical instruments were made from found materials such as metal scraps, glass, and wood waste—used both as functional performative instruments and as independent sculptural objects.

At the core of his practice were now-iconic graphic scores, conceptual art, and interdisciplinary collaborations. We have the opportunity to experience his interactive object from his time as a member of the experimental collective Transmusic Comp, through which a number of figures in contemporary art, performance, and music brought to life radical ideas resonating with the international Fluxus movement, John Cage, and New Music, as well as similarly attuned intermedia art alternatives in both Western and Eastern Europe. By placing Adamčiak within the broader contexts of art, we emphasize the international significance of his work. At the same time, we understand his practice as deeply rooted in the specific cultural and historical context of Slovakia. Adamčiak’s multi-layered programme was created mainly in an environment where culture was divided by the totalitarian regime into official and unofficial spheres. This brought him challenges, suffering, and both minor and major victories.

Lucia Gregorová Stach

RÓBERT GÁL, JAKUB GUZIUR, MARTIN KLIMEŠ — TEXTS 
13. 12. 2024 at 17.30h
Cella Gallery, Matiční 4, Opava

As part of the Paul Panhuysen exhibition, a reading by three authors who explore experimental and inter-genre literary approaches will take place.

Róbert Gál (1968), the enfant terrible of Slovak literature, has been devoted to philosophical aphorism for decades. From aphorism, he ventures into other genres such as prose, essays, and prose poetry. Despite minimal readership and critical recognition of his books, Róbert Gál has been the most frequently translated Slovak author into English for years, making him the most internationally renowned contemporary Slovak writer. His latest book, Tractatus (2021), loosely inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), has been published in English (Tractatus, 2022), as an audiobook (2023), and is set to be published in Turkey (2024) and Germany (2025). Fragments from The Silenced Life (2024), prepared for the Opava reading, follow the form of Tractatus and can be read as prose, poetry, or philosophy. More at www.robert-gal.com.

Jakub Guziur (1978) lives in Ostrava and studied English philology and the history of English and American literature at Palacký University in Olomouc. He has published several monographs on Anglo-American artists (The Myth of Ezra Pound /2004/, *Too Heavy a Lyre: Essays on Reconstructing Meaning in Eliot’s The Waste Land and Pound’s Cantos /2008/, The Blinded Apollo, Castrated Dionysus: Views on Culture in the Modern Era /2008/, The Myth of Bob Dylan /2014/, Bob Dylan Among the Images: Intermedia Exploration /2016/, Ezra Pound in (Post)Culture: The Modernist’s Images in (Artistic) Media /2018/). He also works as a translator, editor, and curator. Jakub Guziur draws on international experimental poetry from the 1960s, situating his explorations within the context of the digital age. He has published five books of visual texts: Pavěk (2009), Protiznaky (2012), Visual Essay (2016), Revolver (2017), and Mythograms (2021). His verbal-visual works are summarized in the monograph Matisse’s Light (2023). He has exhibited his work since 2012 and is a member of Klub konkretistů 3. At Cella Gallery, Jakub Guziur will present his concept of the visual essay, an unconventional form blending visualized essayistic text with poetic meditation.

Martin Klimeš (1960) lives and works in Opava. Since the early 1980s, he has engaged in conceptual art, held several solo exhibitions, and participated in numerous group exhibitions. He has worked as a curator, gallery operator, and organizer of music-sound concerts and festivals. He is active in the Bludný kámen association. Alongside writing various treatises on visual art, he creates unusual texts and diaries. In 2024, he published Sound Diary. Martin Klimeš will read selections from the cycle Every Day, originally intended for a visual format and previously presented as such. Over several years, he recorded the sounds he heard at the same time each day. The list of sounds documents not only the soundscape of the author’s daily life but also the places he frequented. The texts from the Every Day cycle are more rooted in conceptual action than in literary tradition.

PAUL PANHUYSEN: KDE BYDLÍ APOLLÓN / WHERE APOLLO DWELLS
12. 11. 2024 – 30. 1. 2025
Cella Gallery
Curator: Miloš Vojtěchovský

The exhibition opening will take place on Tuesday, 12 November, at 6 PM at Cella Gallery.

The fifth exhibition in a series focusing on prominent European artists who have expanded the concept and boundaries of sound art will present the work of Paul Panhuysen (1934–2015). Where Apollo Dwells offers a small selection from the multifaceted and extensive oeuvre of this interdisciplinary artist and curator, who is often mentioned alongside significant figures in the history of intermedia art from the second half of the 20th century. At Cella Gallery, we will present the sound installation titled ‘La vie est une guitare sur la quelle vous nʼaimez jouer que même air éternellement’. Francis Picabia (Life is like a guitar, on which you only like to play the same eternal melody), which premiered at the Transparent Messenger symposium in Plasy in 1994. The work consists of twelve metal discs arranged on the floor in a constellation based on the so-called “magic square” by the Baroque mathematician and poet Claude Gaspar Bachet de Méziriac. Beneath each disc is an amplifier and speaker, connected to a relay with sound chips that constantly combine twelve identical short melodies. Panhuysen also employed the mathematical combinatorics of “magic squares” in a series of large colour prints titled ‘Two Families of 64 Squares’, referring to the methods used by John Cage in graphic musical scores. For Panhuysen, logic and magic are integral parts of one concept of reality and creation. The installation also includes photographs and examples from the publishing activities of Het Apollohuis (The Apollo House).

Paul Panhuysen (1934–2015) was a Dutch composer, visual and sound artist, and curator. He was the initiator and founder of the international art centre Het Apollohuis in Eindhoven (1980–2001). The former tobacco factory, where he worked and lived with his wife Hélène, combined functions as a gallery, studio, artist residency, and organisational infrastructure for the creation and presentation of sound installations, sculptures, free improvisation concerts, and experimental and electronic music. Panhuysen studied visual arts at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht and sociology at Utrecht University. After experimenting with abstract expressionism (around 1964) and minimalism (until 1966), he turned to music, sound art, performance, and installations under the influence of the Fluxus movement. His social engagement and belief in the mission of experimental art as a catalyst for social change developed from the 1960s onwards. In 1967, he founded the Free Community of the Global City of Peace and Joy, and a year later, the multinational improvisation music ensemble Maciunas Ensemble. From the 1980s onwards, he led Het Apollohuis. In his sound installations, he often combined long stretched piano strings, either mechanically or electronically triggered, with everyday objects. He exhibited, performed, and curated numerous exhibitions and festivals across Europe, the USA, and Asia. Under the roof of Het Apollohuis, he released several sound recordings and catalogues.

The exhibition was supported by a grant from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the Statutory City of Opava, and the State Fund for Culture.

LUCIE VÍTKOVÁ | CONCERT Thursday, October 24, 2024, at 6 PM Galerie Cella, Opava

One of the most prominent contemporary Czech composers and performers, Lucie Vítková/Luc Vitk, who has long lived and worked in New York, will perform their current work directly within the exhibition of Katalin Ladik.

Lucie Vítková/Luc Vitk is a composer, improviser, and performer (accordion, hichiriki, synthesizer, harmonica, voice, and dance) from the Czech Republic, living in New York. During their studies of composition at Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno (CZ), they have been visiting scholar at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague (NL), California Institute of the Arts in Valencia (USA), Universität der Künste in Berlin (D), Columbia University in New York (USA) and at New York University. Their compositions focus on sonification (compositions based on abstract models derived from physical objects), while in their improvisation practice, Luc/ie works with the characteristics of discrete spaces through the interaction between sound and movement. In Luc/ie’s recent work, they are interested in the social-political aspects of music in relation to everyday life and in reusing trash to build sonic costumes and instruments. They have been nominated for the 2017 Herb Alpert Awards in Arts in the category of Music, were commissioned by the Roulette Intermedium in 2017 and have become Roulette resident artist in 2018. They have put together two ensembles – the NYC Constellation Ensemble (focused on musical behavior) and the OPERA Ensemble (for singing instrumentalists). In their dissertation, Compositional Techniques of Christian Wolff and Social Aspects in Music, which was published in 2021, Luc/ie analyzed the music of Christian Wolff, researching on compositional techniques which change relationships between players to reform established hierarchies in music.

Luc/ie’s teachers and collaborators include George Lewis, Suzanne Cusick, Ellie Hisama, Miya Masaoka, Petr Kotík, Hitomi Nakamura, Teerapat Parnmongkol, Jolana Havelková, Muyassar Kurdi, Haruhiko Okabe, Jaroslav Šťastný, Teodora Stepančić, James Ilgenfritz, Mae May, and Graham Haynes.

www.vitkovalucie.com

The concert is being held as an accompanying program to the exhibition Katalin Ladik: Homo Ludens.

Katalin Ladik: Homo Ludens
27.8.–31.10.2024
Cella Gallery, Matiční 4, Opava
Opening will take place on Tuesday 27th August, 6pm at Cella Gallery.

curator: Jakub Frank

The exhibition of Katalin Ladik is the fourth in a series dedicated to leading European artists who expand the concept of sound art in their work. At the HOMO LUDENS exhibition, Ladik presents a video reflecting her poetic works to date, collages, scores, visual works, and recent creations from the series “embroidered sounds” and “singing chests.” These works are complemented by samples and documentation of key projects from the 1970s and 1980s. The opening will feature a performance by the artist, in which she will present her sonic poetry. The exhibition aims to present Katalin Ladik as an artist capable of continuously coming up with new ideas, revisiting past projects and updating them for the 21st century, but above all, always carefully listening to and interpreting her surroundings through her own sonic language.

Katalin Ladik (born 1942) is a Hungarian artist, performer, and poet born in Serbia and currently based in Budapest. Although she primarily identifies as a poet, she leaves the boundaries of poetry completely open, which in her work means a free transition from written text to visual collages and graphic scores, to performances and actions, vocal interpretations of written or visual symbols, and even to radio and theater production. Between 1973 and 1976, she was a member of the Bosch+Bosch group. She currently collaborates with her partner, Josef Schreiner.

PETER ABLINGER: NICHT WIR / NOT US
Cella Gallery, Matiční 4, Opava
28.6.–15.8.2024

The opening will take place on Friday, June 28 at 5:00 PM at Cella Gallery.

Curator: Jakub Frank

The exhibition of Peter Ablinger, an Austrian composer and sound artist living in Berlin, will be the third in a series of exhibitions dedicated to leading European sound artists who have shaped the medium of sound in a gallery environment.

Peter Ablinger’s artworks will be presented in the Czech Republic for the first time at a solo exhibition. In the spaces of Cella Gallery, works from the Weiss/Weisslich series, dedicated to the deep exploration of white noise, which Ablinger has been developing since 1980, will be exhibited. The installation 12 Kassettenrekorder (12 tape recorders), accompanied by instructions for its operation, will be inaugurated with a performance at the exhibition’s opening. It will be complemented by a series of objects Kopfhörer (Headphones), Schneckengehäuse (Snail Shell), and Rauschempfänger (World Receiver), in which Ablinger guides the visitor to sharpen their listening and tune their auditory apparatus.

One of Ablinger’s newest installations, Nicht Wir (Not Us), which will be presented at the exhibition, utilizes the effect of resonance and feedback occurring in a closed circuit. Nicht Wir thus becomes an independent entity that sounds without the need for external input, reflecting only the acoustic properties of its surroundings. “Sometimes, when we get too close to the installation, it decides to go silent on its own and starts sounding again once we move away.”

The exhibition was financially supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the Statutory City of Opava, and the Austrian Cultural Forum in Prague.

Cella Gallery and Hovorny
3. 5. – 20. 6. 2024

The opening will take place on 3rd May at 18:00 in front of Hovorny at Masaryk Avenue 22, then we will move to Cella Gallery.

The exhibition at Cella Gallery will present Hans Peter Kuhn as the author of impressive audiovisual compositions (Richtungsweisend, 2020) and also as a composer whose sound compositions can take forms that are completely reduced and inaudible (Aus der Tiefe, 2007/2024). For Hovorny, Hans Peter Kuhn has prepared a scenographic installation called Cycles. He sets aside all technologies and tells a story of a consumptive cycle without beginning or end from discarded materials.

Hans Peter Kuhn (*1952)
Lives and works in Berlin and in Amino (JP)
German artist and composer Hans Peter Kuhn has been active on the international art scene since the late 1970s. During his time working as a sound technician and sound designer at the Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer theater in Berlin, he began collaborating with prominent figures in contemporary theater, choreography, scenography, and dance. This collaboration notably connected him with avant-garde American director Robert Wilson, with whom Kuhn has since collaborated on more than thirty productions and installations. In 1993, they jointly received the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale. Since the 1980s, Kuhn has also worked as an artist and author of spatial installations, in addition to his involvement in contemporary theater and dance. His main interest lies in the spatial effects of light and sound. His mastery of technology allows him to precisely shape environments whether working inside galleries or outdoors. He has created extensive site-specific installations in public spaces in New York, Leeds, Singapore, Pittsburgh, and Berlin, among others. His work is represented in leading international collections and has been exhibited in institutions across Europe, the United States, Japan, and in other countries. Since 2012, he has been teaching at the University of the Arts in Berlin. The exhibitions Cycles / Cykly at the Cella Gallery and the subsequent Undefined Landscape IV / Nevymezená krajina IV at the House of Art in Opava are his first presentations in the Czech Republic.
www.hanspeterkuhn.com