As is obvious from the title, Michal Kalhous attempts to capture, in an unconventional fashion and from different angles, the everyday relationship between a man and a woman (and, more generally, also between the masculine and feminine principles), that special constellation of two people that is able to create and maintain harmony even in diversity. The cyclic nature of days and years connected with care for family and farm provides a frame in which time acquires a new rhythm devoid of anything superfluous, and returns somewhere before what we see as necessary and unavoidable rules. The harmony springing from collaboration and tolerance, from willingness to let things run their course and rhythm, is reflected in small details and intimate moments, as well as in
unexpected counterpoints.

It would be inaccurate to call Michal Kalhous a photographer, even though he has been working with the medium for over two decades. Contrary to common efforts at perfection, virtuously summarizing series, sharpness and brilliance, Kalhous is rather a quiet and humble narrator curiously describing the intimacies as well as the madness of our world, seeking the sense and balance of phenomena and things without pathos and sentimentality. Kalhous’s exhibition in the Plato gallery is thus both an indirect declaration of love and a testimony to what can be different and what doesn’t need to be fought.

Pavel Vančát

Michal Kalhous *1967

– studied mathematics and physics at the Science Faculty of Olomouc university, followed by art history (studies not completed). In 2013 he earned the PhD degree at the Art and Design Faculty of the UJEP university in Ústí nad Labem. In 2001–2006 he worked as director of the Šternberk Gallery, since 2006 has been teaching at the Faculty of Art of Ostrava university where he established the department of creative photography in 2010. Since 1995 Kalhous has had over 20 solo exhibitions and has taken part in major group shows (e.g. “Test Run” and “Low Budget” of the Ševčík couple in the Mánes gallery, Prague; the 2002 Youth Biennale in the Prague City Gallery; “The Mutating Medium” in Rudolfinum, Prague, and “About the Chair” at this year’s Biennale of Photography and Visual Art in Liege). His photographs are represented in the collections of the Olomouc Art Museum, the Klatovy – Klenová Gallery and the Moravian Gallery in Brno. Michal Kalhous ia also an art activist who initiated, for example, the return of Czech citizenship to writer Erica Pedretti. In 2004 he financed the foundation stone of the Ostrava Kunsthalle for artist Jiří Surůvka.