Geese in a garden, the fragment of a kayak, cloud shadows cast on an open-air cinema screen. Large gray enlargements and humor as dry as an August meadow. Michal Kalhous speaks his own language—both visually and conceptually. By capturing his immediate surroundings and the most mundane motifs with trademark exaggeration, he tells life stories both big and small.

His exclusively black-and-white analog series are intentionally technologically unrefined, instilling uncertainty as well as visual calmness. In the 1990s, his ephemeral images may have described a dreamlike version of the surrounding world; today, on the contrary, they can function as a surprisingly steadfast anchor to reality.

Kalhous himself describes the current exhibition, titled Goosefoot and Raspberries, the Path to Victory, as “an experimental tool of synthesis and a quest toward fulfillment; it is also a purposeful, compelling exploration of sudden moments and their interrelations; once again, an effort to foster a dialogue between inner experience and a higher, transcendent order”.

Michal Kalhous (*1967) currently serves as the Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Ostrava. He graduated from the Faculty of Science at Palacký University Olomouc and completed his doctoral studies in Visual Communication at the Faculty of Art and Design at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem. He has exhibited in prestigious Czech galleries such as PLATO Ostrava or Fait Gallery in Brno, as well as abroad, including at the London College in England.