Petr Válek
Figments (and other stuff)

Petr Válek lives and works in Loučná nad Desnou in Hrubý Jeseník. This little town located in the former Sudetenland used to be called Vízmberk, or Wiesenberg. Renown pianist and poet Alfred Brendel was born in Wiesenberg in 1931. Petr Válek, born in 1976, trained as a stonemason and worked as a nurse in a home for the elderly. He currently lives as a practising artist. Since his childhood, Válek has worked vehemently on his creative activities, which include painting, drawing, book illustration, and music. Presently, he has begun to build (and deconstruct) mechanical and electro-mechanical musical instruments or self-propelled kinetic objects, constructed from found household items. He also performs as Der Marebrechst — a bizarre noise musician and crazy inventor, regularly publishing short "tutorial" videos recorded in his home studio, or in nature on Youtube or more recently on Facebook.

Although definitely not Válek’s first exhibition, Figments (and other stuff) is probably the first attempt to present the wide scope of his creativity and work. The ambience of Válek's studio, stacked with an assemblage of organically and chaotically placed books, drawings, tubes of paint, paintings (both hung and not), along with his computer — which he uses to animate his virtual travels through marvelous dreamy landscapes, the inspiration for which he finds in the deep forest hillsides of the Jeseníky — will be presented.