Distorted Image. Chapters from the beginnings of video art
29. 4.. – 16. 8. 2026  | House of Art, Brno

Curator: Lenka Dolanová

The exhibition explores the beginnings of video art in former Czechoslovakia, and later in Poland and Hungary. It covers the period from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s. The selection of key events and artworks cannot be separated from the broader social and political context, which largely determined access to technology, approaches to working with video imagery, and the possibilities for sharing it. Through examples of works from different countries, the exhibition encourages viewers to look for differences as well as parallels and points of connection. The title refers to a situation in which images were deliberately or unintentionally distorted and manipulated. Experiments were conducted with analog and digital imagery, television transmission, and the television set as an object, questioning the very ability of images to convey truth. At the same time, it suggests that from today’s perspective it is difficult to present the development of video art in its entirety. Access to sources is already challenging: materials are scattered across private and public collections, artists’ archives, in various stages of digitization, or still stored in attics and cellars on historic and slowly degrading media. Very few institutions in the Czech Republic or other Central European countries actively collect and preserve video art, and almost none focus on video installations. When exhibiting historical works, questions arise about the proper way to present them, and to what extent they can be reconstructed or reproduced. 

Vladimír Ambroz, Béla Balázs, Michael Bielický, Gábor Bódy, Wojciech Bruszewski, Filip Cenek, Jiří Černický, Jennifer DeFelice, Izabella Gustowská, Ágnes Háy, Tibor Hajás, Károly Halász, Vladimír Havlík, Vladimír Havrilla, Lumír Hladík, Milan Kohout, Anna Kutera, Karel Kyncl, Adéla Loučanská, Jolanta Marcolla, Dóra Maurer, Zdeněk Mezihorák, Ilona Németh, Miroslav Nicz, Marian Palla, Radek Pilař, Józef Robakowski, Peter Rónai, Tomáš Ruller, Zbigniew Rybczynski, Petr Skala, János Sugár, Lucie Svobodová, Miloš Šejn, Ivan Tatíček, Jaroslav Vančát, Petr Váša, Woody Vašulka, Janka Vidová-Žáčková, Petr Vrána, Martin Zet, Grzegorz Zgraja, Jana Želibská

Miloš Sejn: Psychodrama, 1970, documentation of an action, black and white film 8mm, digitised

web

KK3
 1. – 12. 4. 2026 | Galerie Abstract Project, Paris

Landscapes Seen
27. 3. - 5. 7. 2026 | Galerie Lázně LIberec 

Curator: Michaela Kubišová

The beginning of the 19th century brings new ideas into Czech culture, a new philosophy that seeks to turn the individual’s gaze inward. It arrives in the form of the figure of a torn wanderer standing above an abyss, gazing dreamily into the distance to which he may one day arrive, contemplating the meaning of life and the significance of the individual within its cycle. What does the wanderer see? Weary of the Industrial Revolution, of human progress, of Enlightenment thought, he turns his gaze back into his soul, into the landscape both inner and outer, into an intimate experience, into a connection with nature, the land, the homeland, and history. Exactly as the German painter Caspar David Friedrich depicted him around 1818 in his painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.

JÍT NALEHKO ANEB JAPONSKÉ INSPIRACE
17. – 23. 8. 2026  | Klášter Broumov