Being slightly off the beaten tourist track has not slowed Školská 28's determination to host some of the city's more forward-looking art exhibits and events. Founded in 1999, Školská 28 is pioneering a program of "open" art exhibits that include experimental film, video and avant-garde music events.

Typifying Školská 28's expansive approach to the arts is the current group exhibit "From a Wet Corner of the Universe," which combines a traditional gallery exhibit with "companion evenings" featuring video, film and music.

The exhibit is the concept of Michael Delia, a former New York City–based artist who now spends the greater part of his time in Prague. Delia himself has been coupling visual art with music, film and video since 1992. Although the bulk of his work is clearly experimental, Delia's music and films lack the clutter and cacophony often associated with such endeavors. Instead, as in his visual work, thoughtful counterpoint and balance occur in melodically percussive textures.

Entering Školská 28's L-shaped gallery space, it is immediately apparent that most of the works on display include watercolors echoing the "wet corner" theme. Asked about the exhibit's preoccupation with H2O, Delia explains, "The exhibit is not just about water, but certain metaphors with water and the motion, movement and change that water brings. Especially in this city, with the destruction that happened here with the floods. Water also apparently represents emotion."

To better understand the scope of the exhibit, Delia suggested I return for the gallery's first Thursday night program of music, film and video art. I found that the films by Zet combined cinéma vérité with visual poetry for works of a more narrative nature, while Kořán, Smith and Delia's work brought abstract expressionist film and video art to full realization. The films often included soundtracks with a hypnotic Javanese gamelan feel, produced by Delia's Zimbabwean-styled mbiras and Kořán's tuned scraps of metal. The most effective pieces worked digitally animated, real-life images into dreamscapes of falling rain, babbling creeks and microscopic swirls of color dancing in water.

Delia sees no reason why painters should not be also working with sound. After all, he says, "It is very direct when you paint and make marks on paper — it can be likened to playing an instrument. You hit the string and hear a sound. ... Hit the paper with the pen, pencil or brush and you see a mark. That mark stays, of course, while the sound goes off. But you can make another mark, and if you want you can just paint white over it and it's gone."

What these artists clearly share with their musician counterparts is using trained intuition to compose with improvisation. To better illustrate these "controlled accidents," Delia borrows an analogy from the artist Francis Bacon, who once compared the improvisations of an artist to the actions of a baseball player, who must train extensively to catch ground balls, but in the real game has to jump to make a random catch.

This week Delia and Kořán will again capture the moment by trading their paint brushes and cameras for an array of mostly self-made musical instruments, providing the current exhibit's second and final companion evening. Their intricate use of music seems an appropriate bookmark in the lives of four multitalented artists, as well as the multifaceted Školská 28 gallery.