Jiří Hůla

“I may have already mentioned Dr Zemina. At that time, he worked in Zbraslav, where there was a large depository of things that werwn't allowed to be exhibited in the National Gallery. When one gained his trust, Dr Zemina took him there and showed it to him. So we came to him, and he tested us in a strange way. He pulled out a picture and said, 'This is a nice thing.' It wasn't that nice, and we replied: 'This is nothing.' After a while, he pulled out a Slavík, to which we rightly responded with an astonished: 'Wow!' Finally, he showed us Kolářová. It was a piece made of pierced press studs from the National Gallery. We recognized it and passed successfully. Another significant visit was to Václav Boštík. We also knew Karel Nepraš and used to go to Kučerová's too. Then followed Kratina, Kubíček, Mrázek, Mrázková, Jiří Schmid, Olga Karlíková, but also Janoušek and Janoušková. It was a whole range of people from the older generation, and then our peers or younger authors followed.”

“I wrote a cycle of about forty large typescripts, some of them were stylized characters. I wanted to stylize all the letters of the alphabet in a grid of three by five cubes. A, B, C, and so on [pause]. It worked, but there was a problem with the letter M, which had to turn. That's when it occurred to me that it would be interesting to know what all the options are. There was another program for that, called Kit H. After eliminating all symmetries and rotations, the program found nine hundred and thirty-one possibilities for cubes of height three and width five. And because I wrote it spatially, the letters looked like cubes. That's when my brother and I thought of making a material version of it. We created a variable sculpture of nine hundred and thirty-one elements, which I called Kit H."

"Suddenly, we realised there was a shortage of gallery space where we could exhibit and that we had the barn. It was in a rather desolate state but it wasn't a lost cause. Two years before, I frequented Nerudovka [Theatre in Nerudovka], where Jiří Beránek had an exhibition. I got to know him. As we sat together talking, I told him about our barn and that there was a rotten beam in it that needed propping up with a post. He said he would do it and that we could rely on it. It took another two years. Finally, in the year eighty-three, he arrived, stayed with us for about three months, and in addition to the column, he also built the floor, stairs and railings. The gallery gradually acquired its shape and concept. When the gallery was completed, we wanted it to be known. At that time, we already had a very extensive directory that I was managing. Jirka Beránek had a great reputation. He was an artist who came to the Czech Republic from Sobotín in Moravia, he did a different type of thing, and people started to be interested in him. He also belonged to the emerging group Dvanáct patnáct [12/15 Late, but still]. So we held a vernissage, sent out invitations and published a large catalogue. A lot of people came, and by that, the gallery launched."