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.

CORE OF THE COALMAN (UK), MOONCUP ACCIDENT (CZ), ROUILLEUX (CZ) | concert
6. 11. 2025, 19:00
Galerie Cella

Core of the Coalman (UK) Jorge Boehringer is an interdisciplinary artist, composer, performer, and researcher based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. His eclectic and experimental practice unfolds through installed acoustic environments, composed music, spatial sound, performance, writing, and visual art. Through sound and listening, he investigates attention, instability, and temporality within ecological contexts as well as everyday life. Boehringer regularly performs solo under the noise-project moniker Core of the Coalman, an open sketchbook in continual evolution, articulated through both old and new instruments and media. He also releases computer music under the name On Growth and Form, and performs as half of the duo Kneeling Coats with composer and musician Eleanor Cully, who is also his collaborator in all other areas of work. He is currently a research fellow in sonification design and aesthetics at Newcastle University. www.coreofthecoalman.bandcamp.com www.jorgeboehringer.com

Rouilleux (CZ) Since the debut Zugzwang, Rouilleux has belonged among the hidden treasures of the Czech scene. Luboš Rezek’s project is defined by introverted, ambition-free songwriting that organically weaves together drone, noise, and fragments of guitar-based genres. Rouilleux never fully relinquishes the freedom of amorphous forms, yet his pieces still function as powerful songs — thanks to his ability to write a striking melody, but above all due to his extraordinary voice, whose urgency carries a subtle undertone of despair. The newest release, The Fold, presents this many-configurations project in its most radical form: a 17-minute piece that assembles itself differently each time from prepared fragments. Ultimate freedom that nevertheless sounds entirely organic. www.rouilleux.bandcamp.com www.thefold.rouilleux.net

Mooncup Accident (CZ) The project of Prague-based musician, curator, and Klang-und-Krach label founder Jan Klamm (from 2013–2017 a duo with poet and visual artist Kristina Láníková) focuses on the manipulation of sonic accidents. While the glitch aesthetics of the 1990s — tied to laptop music — were built on beautifying discarded sounds, Mooncup Accident imaginatively returns to a time when the word glitch meant nothing more than a malfunction. Voice, dictaphones, guitar, piezo pickups, and neurotic bodily movements all cultivate an ethics of the dump: the scraps do not form carefully designed collages; they pile up into uneven heap-like masses. Mooncup Accident’s work — like any proper landfill — is disorganized, stratified, a little dangerous, yet strangely alluring. You may find something fascinating in it… or nothing at all. www.mooncupaccident.bandcamp.com

PRIX RUSSOLO | listening Evening 13 November 2025, 6:00 PM Galerie Cella, Opava

We invite you to a listening evening featuring works selected for the international competition PRIX RUSSOLO. The evening will include an audience vote for the best composition.

The list of works will be published prior to the event.

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Since its founding in 1979, the Prix Luigi Russolo has been exploring new sonic territories opened through the interdisciplinary research of the composer, painter, and metaphysician Luigi Russolo (1885–1947).

As a key figure in 20th-century music, Russolo became famous in 1913 for his manifesto The Art of Noises (L’arte dei rumori), in which he developed the idea that all sounds – especially those of the industrial world – have their place in musical orchestration. He moved from theory to practice by constructing a number of sound machines, including the famous: • Intonarumori (noise instruments / “bruiteurs”), • Rumorharmonium / Russolophone,

and thus became a pioneer of noise music, which foreshadowed concrete and electronic music.

From the very beginning, Russolo sought to reach higher states of consciousness through both images and sounds. In this spirit, Prix Russolo, starting from its 33rd edition, expands its field of exploration to include all acousmatic and electronic music that makes the immaterial visible or audible – in the dual movement of the materialization of spirit and the spiritualization of matter.

From the submissions by composers and musicians from around the world, seven works have been selected to be presented between July and December 2025 in several cities. The winner of the Prix Russolo will be determined by audience vote during these concerts and announced at the final Prix Russolo event.

9. 10. 2025
19:00
Cella Gallery, Opava

Erik and Petr first met in Canada in the fall of 2021. Since then, they have performed at several festivals in the Czech Republic and France and recorded the album L’horizon des événements, released in May 2023 by the Canadian label Tour de bras. In this duo, sound itself serves as a true platform for communication.

ErikM is a French composer, electronic musician, and visual artist. His work draws on intimate, political, as well as both popular and high culture. He approaches sounds as living organisms—always in motion, always open to the risks of chance or pleasure. In his improvisations, as he plays with all these opposites, his performances reach new heights of intensity, alternating between understanding and sensation, seriousness and farce, expectation and instinct. Among his notable collaborators are Luc Ferrari, Christian Marclay, Mathilde Monnier, FM Einheit, and Otomo Yoshihide. https://www.erikm.com/

Petr Vrba is one of the key figures of Czech experimental music and an tireless advocate of free improvisation. He plays trumpet, clarinets, synthesizers, and other electronic instruments. As a trumpeter, Vrba explores the integration of the trumpet into new contexts and the creation of new contexts by other means—both acoustic and electronic. In doing so, he demonstrates remarkable inventiveness driven by a fascination with the acoustic experience. https://vrrrba.cz/

Curator: Daniel Brożek

The installation by Polish artist Beniamin Głuszek is a tribute to Alvin Lucier, the pioneer of EEG use in experimental music (Music for Solo Performer, 1965) and an innovator of sound art (Music on a Long Thin Wire, 1977). At the same time, it revives the legacy of Kraków-based neurophysiologist Adolf Beck (1863–1942), the discoverer of brain action potentials and one of the first researchers in the field of electroencephalography. Głuszek stands out for his approach to sound installation, in which he draws on the technological principles of early experimenters in both sound and science.

Beniamin Głuszek Creator of sound installations, music theorist. His main focus is the sonification of the brain’s electrical activity (EEG). He has presented his works in the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Scotland, and Poland – including at the Warsaw Autumn Festival, AudioArt, the Survival Art Review, and the Canti Spazializzati cycle. https://neuromuzyka.pl/

Alvin Lucier (1931–2021) Composer, pioneer of experimental music and sound art, professor at Wesleyan University, member of the Sonic Arts Union (together with Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma). He was the first to systematically explore the physicality of acoustic phenomena, mechanisms of sound perception, and the acoustic properties of space. “We all come from him.”

Daniel Brożek Curator and theorist of sound and sound art. He curates the Survival Art Review and the Canti Spazializzati cycle. He is a member of the Soundscape Research Studio at the University of Wrocław. For many years he has collaborated with the magazine Glissando, the PLATO Gallery in Ostrava, and the Sanatorium of Sound festival, and he ran the blog Canti Illuminati. As Czarny Latawiec, he performs as a musician and creates sound installations and theatre compositions.

The installations that will be presented at the exhibition in Cella Gallery were realized as part of the Survival Art Review (Sleep Strings, 2019) and the cycle Canti Spazializzati (Clocker, 2022).

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.