Dominik Běhal, Noli me tangere, 2024, fresco on panel, 130 x 100 cm 

The painting responds to the work of Italian masters of the early Renaissance. Noli me tangere ("Touch me not") refers to traditional Christian iconography depicting the resurrected Christ and the kneeling Mary Magdalene, to whom he appears after the Crucifixion, instructing her to bear witness to this miracle before the disciples, yet not to touch him out of impassioned curiosity. The identical inscription appears on the Gothic portal of the royal treasury in the Italian Court in Kutná Hora. The artist employs the technique of fresco painting on a solid panel, achieving an authentic expression where contemporary painting merges with elements of memory-based and material transfer, as well as involuntary memory.

Dominik Běhal, Sphere, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 cm 

The work Sphere plays with semantic ambiguity. The enigmatic green orb depicted in the painting alludes to the mathematical concept of a sphere as the surface of a ball. At the same time, a sphere can also refer to the "shell of Earth" or any celestial body governed by specific physical laws and living non-conditions. It may equally denote a mental sphere, a conceptual domain defined by focus and intellectual intent. The alchemising still life is composed of a grassy sphere, an allusion to a blue leafwork, and an indeterminate natural backdrop that seems to materialise in magnified scale from the spiritual and imaginative essence of a medieval manuscript.

Dominik Běhal, The Old Woman Burns the Hut, 2023, fresco on panel, 80 x 60 cm 

This conceptually rich work, with its ambiguous title, offers a metaphorical reflection on the perception of human time in relation to the abstract dimension of eternity. The motive of a burning ornament encircling a black-and-white circular rosette symbolises the recurrent winding of human time, which fulfils itself along its horizon. The painting can be interpreted as a symbolic representation of death, one that is less about anguish and more about hope and spiritual purification. By layering the fresco, the artist creates a tangible engagement with the passage of time.

Richard Štipl, Lovers, 2022, wood, chalk,
130 x 100 x 70 cm 

The work is a sculptural collage of scale, where the adequacy of polarised symmetry is fractured, and the relationship between two beings transforms into an uncertain state of ecstatic dream. Varied sculptural materials and surface treatments reflect the contiguity inherent in partnership. Two hands seem to delimit a fateful zone of dramatic tension. The external sculptural constellation captures the dynamics and upheavals of an inner experience, which, whether vital or painful, deforms the faces of the figures. A true union between them seems impossible. It becomes an abstract, unattainable idea – a utopia. 

Richard Štipl, Mercy Seat, 2023, wood, chalk, 150 x 115 x 15 cm 

Jesus Christ was appointed by God as the means of propitiation through faith in His blood. Some Bibles have a footnote for the word "propitiation" saying that the word designates "a mercy seat." One could say: "God appointed Him (Jesus Christ) as the mercy seat." The mercy seat covered the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies, symbolising Christ's mission. In Štipl's relief, this Christian motive is reimagined as an allegorical scene. Through the manipulation of scale, the artist invites us into the symbolic microflora of the human conscience, where salvation and condemnation metastasise. 

Jindřich Zeithamml, Case, 2022, beaten silver, wood, paint, 204 x 85 x 87 cm 

The colourful stele composed of various flat picture formats occupies the centre of the Empire-style circular room at the Kačina Castle. The contrast between the vivid sculpture and the purely white architectural setting is striking in itself and can lead to several interpretations. The artist describes the work as follows: "The exhibited piece is part of a series I call Cases. I've been exploring this theme continuously since the mid-1970s. This sculpture is from 1982, but it was only completed in 2022. In many ways, this Case represents the culmination of the entire series to date. Through the use of colour, architectural composition, the lining of the interior space with beaten silver, and the rhythmic sequencing of individual forms, such as the circle, square, ellipse, container, and both horizontal and vertical lines, I attempt to depict something that, in essence, cannot be seen. It is invisible. The exterior (the shell) serves both as protection and as a means of approaching or interpreting that which remains hidden within." The tension between the clarity of sculptural form and the ambiguity of meanings it subtly conveys, provoking and testing the viewer's attention, is characteristic of Jindřich Zeithamml's work.