Gerhard Flekatsch – Resonance is one of the main exhibitions of Smetana Art Litomyšl festival, a visual arts project organized by Municipal Gallery Litomyšl. Presented at the Castle Brewery in the centre of the festival, the exhibition runs from 12 June to 5 July 2026 and features drawings, videos, photographs, paintings, and installations exploring the intersections of art, science, and personal experience.
Gerhard Flekatsch (*1958) is an Austrian visual artist whose work is created at the intersection of art, science and personal experience. In his works, he combines knowledge from medicine, music and photography – fields he has been intensively involved in throughout his life. He has studied medicine, worked as a journalist and photographer, and worked in international air medical operations for over twenty years. It was his experiences of travel, encounters with different cultures and borderline situations of human existence that greatly shaped his later artistic work.
RESONANCE
The exhibition Resonance was created for this year’s Smetana Art Litomyšlwhose theme is nature. Instead of a literal grasp of this concept, however, it takes its own path and focuses on the relationship of man to the world and the ability to be influenced, drawn in or transformed.
Resonance is not understood here only as a physical phenomenon, but above all as an experience of interaction – the moment when something reaches us, connects us with our surroundings or changes our perception. The exhibition works with movement, rhythm, repetition and time, creating situations in which the viewer does not become a passive observer, but an active part of the work.
WORKS ON DISPLAY
The works on display include drawings, photographs, videos, paintings, and installations. In some of them, the artist works with the element of chance and with the search for meaning in unplanned situations. The drawing Synchron, for example, was created through a single continuous gesture in which control intertwines with the intuitive movement of the hand. The video Symmetrie employs the mirroring of random structures in order to reveal our tendency to seek order even where perhaps none exists. The installation Out of the instant functions as the artist’s “diary of the unconscious”. It forms part of Gerhard Flekatsch’s long-term project, within which he has already created thousands of spontaneous drawings emerging immediately after waking. Another group of works focuses on the mutability of our perception and on the experience of time. The video installation 5 Minuten arose from a simple gesture — the artist asked fellow artists to devote five minutes of their time to him. The result is a series of profoundly human works balancing on the very threshold between image and video. In Vague, the image appears only as an unstable shadow dependent on light, while the photographic cycle Resonanz und Natura captures the landscape in motion, on the border between visibility and dissolution. The motif of human presence and corporeality also appears in several other exhibited works. In the paintings Zwischenraum,the viewer themself becomes part of the image through the reflective surface. The installation 80 Liter Tränen evokes both the fragility and emotionality of human existence, drawing on the findings, that a person produces approximately eighty litres of tears over the course of a lifetime. The cycle vibrant colors works almost physically with the energy of colour, rhythm, and contrasts. The exhibition culminates in the object Organic Plastic Being, installed in the crypt of the Church of the Finding of the Holy Cross — a strangely living, “breathing” form oscillating between organism and artificial structure.
Duration of the exhibition:
12. 6. – 5. 7. 2026
Date of the opening:
13. 6. 2026 v 10.30
Address:
Chateau Brewery, Jiráskova 133, Litomyšl
Opening hours:
Mon-Fri 10.00-17.00, Sat-Sun 10.00-19.00
Curator of the exhibition:
Martina Zuzaňáková
Organizer of the exhibition:
Gerhard Flekatsch and the Municipal Gallery Litomyšl
The exhibition Gerhard Flekatsch / Resonance is part of the Smetana Art Litomyšl 2026 project. Záštitu nad projektem převzal Ing. Roman Línek, radní Pardubického kraje. Projekt mohl být realizován díky laskavé finanční podpoře Veroniky a Libora Winklerových, Ministerstva kultury České Republiky, Pardubického kraje, města Litomyšl a Rakouského kulturního fóra v Praze.
