CGD

Robert V. Novák and Zuzana Burgrová began designing the new visual morphology of the Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava (GVUO) in the late 2015. It was partially implemented in 2017 and, a year later, the Gallery's new website was launched and the concept of its self-contained visual identity was presented at the exhibition SPEKTRUM – The Origination of the Gallery's New Visual Morphology. The aim of the designers was to create a loose framework solely defined by compositional barriers. The result therefore is not a conventionally conceived model of a firmly defined visual identity, which would merely be handed over to an institution for its further massive implementation. "We try to approach the visual identity non-dogmatically, as an open system capable of further development, especially with regard to the planned completion of the House of Arts. We do not view the process as enclosed; instead, we would like to respond to new stimuli even in the future and to work with the set system as a living organism," Robert V. Novák explains. The designers' approach is intentionally open, thus meeting the cultural character of the institution that will use it. The changes of the visual identity are among other things – linked with the exhibition cycle "A Work from the GVUO Collections", where the particular works of art are selected by various figures from the fields of literature, fine arts, theater, architecture, science, music, restoration and other professions, whose sensitivity and invention qualifies them to curate a single-work display. (For example, in the framework of the new visual's presentation, Jaromír Typlt selected the painting Partisans by Ladislav Zívr for the above-mentioned cycle.) The visual transformation of GVUO is not complete yet, since the institution prepares its vestibule reconstruction, a new space for presenting the Gallery's publications and a new system of orientation for the next year.

Pavla Pauknerová