12TH SYMPOSIUM LITOMYŠL | CZECH REPUBLIC | BELGIUM
SYMPOSIUM DURATION: 31. 08. 2025 - 24. 01. 2026
EXHIBITION DATE: 02. 11. 2025 - 24. 01. 2026
EXHIBITION OPENING: 01. 11. 2025 | 2025
GUIDED TOUR: TBC
CURATOR OF THE EXHIBITION: RADEK VÁŇA (CZ / NL)
Closing OF THE EXHIBITION: 24.01.2026 | 17:00
This year’s symposium brings together Czech and Belgian artists at different stages of their careers, working across a wide range of media — from tactile, hands-on creation to the precise use of digital tools. Yet the results consistently reveal the fundamental role of imagination, reflection on one’s place in the world, and the physical presence of artworks within the gallery space. The field of connections and relationships between these nine artists is vibrant and open-ended.
Given the generous scale of the beautiful gallery, it was essential to prepare a sufficient selection of works to fill it — yet equally important is the atmosphere that emerges through shared time: in the studio, at the swimming pool, or over a beer and burčák. The Czech–Belgian group spans a wide age range, from 28 to 63 years old, and it was especially rewarding to see how contemporary art, through its openness, can create a free, intergenerational space.
Over time, different bonds and affinities appeared — ones that also shaped the form of the exhibition installation. The layout plays with the mingling of individual artists and the interaction of their works. Affinities emerge: the use of fragments, engagement with everyday objects, connections to history, and glances toward the future. Personal perspectives, as well as human fragility and vulnerability, play their part too.
This mix, we hope, forms a whole in which our complex lived world can be felt — yet one where a joyful belief prevails: that through the creativity of our thoughts and hands, we can describe that world and give it a bearable shape.
Because the opening of this year’s exhibition, One Strike to Heaven, takes place several weeks after the symposium itself, its process resembled more an artist residency. The participants made the most of this, working until the very last moment, and many continued developing new pieces in their own studios after returning from Litomyšl. We hope that the original summer energy of the two-week creative gathering still resonates in this autumn exhibition.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
ALENA KOTZMANNOVÁ (CZ)
Alena Kotzmannová works with black-and-white photography, persistently striving to transcend the limitations of this medium. She contrasts the basic principle of photography — the imprint of a moment that can be infinitely reproduced — with spatial installation, working in cycles with cohesive sets, and increasingly also with the creation of unique, non-reproducible works.She has long been interested in opposing the photographic moment, a product of human technology, to the enduring (an)organic processes of nature. Rocks, minerals, and, in their purest form, crystals (which formed the foundation of Czech Cubist architecture) embody a completely different sense of time. Their abstract geometry infiltrates Alena’s photographs — sometimes literally, as their imprint, or as an added layer of form. Silica sand (also used in the production of photographic optics) creates a parallel layer on the surface of her large-format photographs, where natural and photographic (optical) processes condense. The photograph thus gains an unrepeatable tangibility and steps out of the endless flow of production and reproduction.
NICK ANDREWS (BE)
Nick Andrews displays an almost old-fashioned joy in creation and in working with various painterly materials. Drawing is fundamental to him, and during his stay in Litomyšl, he filled his sketchbook with observations of this fascinating little town — details of façades, roofs, chimneys, and towers. From these fragments, through a stream of creative energy, he built a new reality: the essence of Litomyšl.His emphasized linearity and the use of the three primary colors lend even small formats a sense of solidity, drama, and expressiveness. Alongside these works, he created a monumental, roughly four-meter-long leporello — a variation on the travel sketchbook. The architectural motifs of Litomyšl, rendered in swift brushstrokes, acquire the dynamism and rhythm of a musical score.
VERONIKA BEZDENEJNYKH (BE)
Veronika Bezdenejnykh creates layered, flat paintings that immediately attract attention with their rich ornamentation. This draws deeply from Middle Eastern traditions (where the artist’s roots lie), as well as from classical mosaics and medieval art. Her method is imitation — ornament as one of the fundamental artistic elements with which humans have long filled empty spaces. Yet here, it takes the form of collage, often composed digitally.These works play with illusion, working with what our brain automatically assembles into images of what we know (carpets) or recognize (pearls). However, Veronika’s focus remains on painting itself — how roughly can a pearl be sketched with a brush while still being perceived as such? The result is imitation of different materials, an associative reminder of art history, and above all, a celebration of the physical presence of painting. Her large formats shape the space and lend the gallery, for a moment, the intimacy of a home.
FEIKO BECKERS (NLBE)
Feiko Beckers (1983) creates (video) performances and objects that are often striking and absurd. In his sculptural works, he employs formal associations with twentieth-century modernisms — which only highlights the fact that his main material is the word, language, and narrative. His subject matter revolves around utterly banal and seemingly insignificant moments and situations, often drawn from his own experiences.From words, Feiko chisels a kind of sculpture, allowing ordinary things to grow with the inevitable logic of linguistic composition and of real or imagined consequences. From banality, something inescapable emerges. In the individual, patterns of behavior are revealed — often with strong emotional charge. His constructions are akin to those of Milan Kundera: our embedding in a complex web of social relationships and ties is frequently manifested through objects and things. Around them unfolds a web of (linguistic) misunderstandings that lead to awkwardness and often to inevitable failure.Sometimes Feiko draws us into a cathartic whirl of reflection, other times he merely hints — but he always manages to offer a different perspective. That viewpoint can coexist with the original one. It is a kind of soft strength, which — much like Pat and Mat — offers comfort through the acceptance of failure.
NADIA NAVEAU (BE)
Nadia Naveau offers her audience a wild ride — a dance of fingers and imagination. These two creative forces are inseparably intertwined: material and image. On one side, the archaeologist, piecing together meaning and form from excavated fragments; on the other, the sculptor, relishing the mutable spatiality of sculpture from every angle.With energetic ease, Nadia guides us through the history of art. We recognize familiar elements — de Chirico, Schlemmer, Brancusi. This collage-like stroll through the fragments of our collective memory is enriched by her references to pop culture: cowboys with their brash courage, comic-book exaggerations, mythical collage-like centaurs and masks. It becomes a playful clash of elements that intertwine, while we try — almost in vain — to pick out the ones that matter most to us. They whirl together in a baroque vortex, a unity that spits out details only to have them reassemble in our minds as something new — perhaps part of a face.Her sculptures are deeply rooted in the history of sculpture, yet they also share with contemporary art the principle of reproducibility. Nadia reproduces fragments from her visual archive, re-casting parts of older sculptures and reusing them as “original copies” within new works. During her residency in Litomyšl, she used moulds borrowed from local restorers, merging her imagination with the spirit of Czech Baroque.
GILLES DUSONG (BE)
Gilles Dusong enjoys moving through liminal spaces — both literally and metaphorically. His sculptures resemble strange machines for living, or for travelling through space-time. Their individual parts look like mechanical components; assembled into ingenious, often symmetrical structures, they evoke modular dwellings from retro visions of humanity’s future.Gilles plays with their scale and situates them in ambiguous contexts — on nocturnal beaches or among aquatic plants. In doing so, they acquire stories, a sense of adventure, even the aura of a new kind of nature. This is paradoxical, since Gilles’s sculptures are made without the touch of a human hand. In contrast, his pencil drawings are painstakingly handmade, though they possess a sculptural rigidity — and sometimes sculptures appear within them: for instance, a portrait from the restorers’ studio finds itself within a scene from Litomyšl’s church.Conversely, architectural details of the church lend a familiar air to his otherwise elusive, decoratively robotic sculptures created during the symposium. His drawings, in different ways, depict the strange edges of our lived world: nightscapes, peripheries, and activities at the margins of visibility. In his work, Gilles connects the present with a future tinged with the past — and leaves us wondering how human that future will remain. The white and silver of his sculptures carry a kind of innocence… or is it the color of alienation?
DAVID MOŽNÝ (CZ)
David Možný is a master at creating somnambulant, apocalyptic scenes that subtly unsettle our familiar world through seemingly minimal gestures. He consistently explores the environments in which our civilized lives unfold — and which, at the same time, define their boundaries. These boundaries are rarely set by us; they were drawn long ago by invisible others — politicians, technocrats, architects. Perhaps that’s why we often feel out of place in them.David translates this feeling into condensed reality: spaces and objects at the periphery of our attention become central, almost as ready-mades. Yet what seems fixed and immutable in the real world comes alive in his work — things float, sink, interpenetrate. These are collisions of surfaces that lead not to transformation but to short-circuit. The result is a physical experience.Sometimes quite literally — we must walk through labyrinths of airport barriers or office blinds; other times metaphorically — we sense the pulsing communication within a monolith built from office desks, evoking the familiar environment of the open office.
LUKÁŠ SLAVICKÝ (CZ)
Lukáš Slavický constructs his paintings from seemingly unrelated elements dispersed across the surface. Sometimes their structure appears rational, other times intuitive. In both cases, his fascination with cinematic storytelling is evident. His paintings function as mood- or storyboards for films that don’t yet exist.Not only film frames but also abstract color fields are connected by transitions reminiscent of film editing. Lukáš creates atmospheres in which visual associations merge like in a poetic experimental film. Beneath their apparent complexity, his works tell simple stories — about home, love, war, humanity.Nature plays an important role, representing both authenticity — something to which we can emotionally attach — and the stage on which human history unfolds. This awareness of interconnectedness has led the painter to his Monochrome Canvas of a Generation: like a group portrait, from the depths of the forest, from the past and the future alike, representatives of humanity — pre-modern, natural, young, and old — gaze at us. Their look is not comforting, yet not condemning either. It calls for responsibility and solidarity. The consciousness of being part of a larger whole permeates all of Lukáš’s work.
JAKUB MATUŠKA (CZ)
Jakub Matuška, a.k.a. Masker (1981), is a painter, yet drawing remains the foundation of his work. Drawing traditionally carries the aura of authenticity — the unmediated trace of thought — but with Jakub, things are more complex. Small digital sketches are enlarged onto canvas, and their trembling lines are complemented by subtle contours and color accents, evoking the lightness of watercolor.The pulsing of lines and planes, their visual permeability, contrasts with the basic drawings — almost comic-like depictions of figures and scenes. Images dissolve, overlap, and merge into one another, forming a vast whole: a world in which we are part of a network of social relations. Just as the drawn line searches for its form and stability, so too do the figures within his paintings.They appear lost in an uncertain world of clashing energies, caught in the social roles dictated by contemporary urban life. Sometimes they fade away, sometimes cling to others — through wireless technologies — or hide their worries behind a curtain. In the end, only the certainty of direct contact remains: the touch of a palm on stone, the taste of earth. The question is — must we fall before we can touch?
