Southeast... (with E. Adamcová), Sýpka Gallery, Valašské Meziříčí, 2009

Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Sulawesi. Islands in the Southeast Asia that Ivan Ouhel visited in the end of 2008 with Eva Adamcová.
Indonesia is a country full of bizarrely combined colours literally attacking the viewer from all sides. Where else than here, near the equator, you can see girls dressed in floral patterns or shades of the Thick-billed Parrot, completely incompatible for the eye of a European? It is an unavoidable inspiration for painter Ivan Ouhel, for whom colours are one of his main themes. He perceives them almost as living creatures that must be taught how to live and exist next to one another. He is engaged with the question of how they live together and influence each other and the alert viewer is excited by the tension between seemingly irreconcilable colours. In Ivan Ouhel's new work, we cannot see the Indonesian brightness of local streets full of stands, children running around, colourful posters only, but also the bright mosaics of litter. On the other hand, his inspired paintings take us into the depths of the jungle, where the deep green mixes with thick brown. We can feel the life-giving force hidden in the deep vegetation. Spring can gush out even where there seems to be a desert. We mustn't forget the light, ever so different from the subtle glow we are privileged with in the temperate strip. In Indonesia, the day changes into night as if somebody has switched the light off. There is no time to say goodbye to the sun setting. On one of Ouhel's paintings, there is a thin streak of sunshine on a dark surface and somewhere close to the edge there is the azure sky of the new day, whereas on the other side the previous day is fading. And yet again, we can feel the impatience, "let there be light again and the world warm up with all the mysterious colours..."
Compared with the tension of colours of Ouhel's work, Eva Adamcová's prints breathe, if you can say that, with quiet serenity and fatal resignation. When the "musim hujan" – the rainy season – comes, all you can do is to wait, huddled in a hood, for the rain to end. Monotone downpours batter the ground from dawn to dusk and the air smells of soft soil. Face to face with a centuries old cone-shaped mountain full of hot lava, the feeling of resignation comes. The volcano may wake up to life at any time. The infinity of the horizon expressed by a simple line encompasses the power of simplicity.