The intervention in the permanent exhibition ART IS HERE: New Art was created on the occasion of celebrating the seventieth birthday of the important conceptual artist, curator and art theorist Jiří Valoch and presents a selection from his oeuvre spanning more than fifty years of work in the field of visual poetry and conceptually-oriented art. At the same time, it is a natural sequel to the previous collaboration between the Moravian Gallery in Brno and Jiří Valoch as his collection of other artists' works forms the very foundation of ART IS HERE.
In the Czech milieu, Jiří Valoch is recognised mainly as a curator and theorist. From the sixties his art was presented almost exclusively abroad where it was sent by mail or shared within a circle of colleagues and friends. In the context of the Czech Republic he was not permitted to exhibit publicly until the nineties when he had begun to orient himself to creating gallery-specific textile installations. For visitors to the Moravian Gallery in Brno this is a rare first opportunity to get acquainted in greater detail with the work of the artist originating from the 1960s and 1970s.
Jiří Valoch (6/9/1946 in Brno)
A poet, curator, collector and creator of visual and conceptual poetry, photographic poetry and photographic concepts, textile installations, conceptual drawings and artists' books. Between 1962 and 1965 he studied at the Grammar School in Brno-Husovice and subsequently in 1965-1970 at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University, specialising in Czech and German Studies and Aesthetics. Since 1966 he has been active as a theorist and curator and has organised exhibitions of contemporary art. Between 1969 and 1972 he created minimalist events and interventions in the natural environment. In 1968 he organised the first-ever exhibition of computer graphics in the Eastern Bloc countries (Brno House of Arts), an exhibition of Music Sheets, visual poetry entitled Tool etc. and Land Art.
From 1972 to 2001 he worked as curator in the House of Arts. In the seventies, under the banner of this institution, he staged exhibitions bringing together classic modernism and post-war themes (František Gross, František Hudeček and Ladislav Zívr). From 1982 he gradually presented the most remarkable figures of Czech contemporary art (Vladimír Boudník, Adriena Šimotová, Václav Boštík, Stanislav Kolíbal, Ladislav Novák, Karel Malich, Milan Knížák, Eva Kmentová and many others). He is credited with several hundred catalogue texts, exhibition openings and reviews in specialized journals.