The Wide World of Local Art
Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette September 5, 1986
by Kent Williams

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This article is a review of the 62nd Annual University of Illinois Faculty Art Exhibit at the Krannert Art Museum. The excerpt from the text reproduced below is the section of the review that focuses on John Hrehov's work.

Four O'Clock. Colored Pencil on Paper, 1986.

John Hrehov's small colored pencil drawings also utilize mysterious settings, although you have to search through them to find out where the mystery's coming from. In "Four O'Clock," Hrehov shows us the interior room of a house, with a giant colorful vase to one side, an abstracted clock (set at 4 o'clock) on the back wall, and with a wonderful yellow-charcoal afternoon light (at least I assume it's afternoon) drifting in through the large windows in the back.

Also in this small drawing there's a statue of a nude woman; she's all blue-gray and angular, and this gives her futuristic sheen. But Hrehov dips her head way over to one side, and the sweeping curve of her shoulder and neck humanizes her. We start to think that this room may be her room, that perhaps someone has turned her into a statue, or at least that she moves about freely as one. as with his other works, Hrehov achieves this slightly fantastical mood with his imaginative use of color and his utterly precise technique.