The final weeks of August at the Blansko City Gallery are dedicated to an artist-in-residence program focused on exploring and reflecting on the landscape of the Moravian Karst.

This year’s resident is Imrich Veber, whose primary artistic medium is photography. From his early work, which was primarily associated with social documentary, he has shifted in recent years toward an intermedia understanding of photography, which he develops within the broader context of installation and object art, as well as digital post-production and image manipulation.

During his residency, he created several new works whose leitmotif is a visual analysis of the local geological terrain—caves, rocks, and stones—as well as a reflection on the transformations of the landscape caused by both natural processes and human activity. The project thus incorporates the impacts of a severe drought, which caused the Bílý potok stream to dry up, as well as traces of intense tourist traffic.

The exhibition installation itself evokes the rugged terrain of the Moravian Karst and confronts the viewer with two perspectives: what unfolds above ground and what remains hidden beneath the surface.

Above their heads, for example, viewers can observe a processual rope drawing created during a rock-climbing workshop at Býčí skála. The artist recorded the trajectories of the ropes using panoramic photography and subsequently edited the resulting images in post-production to create the final open composition. Here, photography ceases to be a mere record of what is seen and becomes a medium for capturing the movement of the body in the landscape and its fleeting trace.

The installation also includes objects created by children during an accompanying workshop, in which the relationship between the natural and the artificial unfolds. The children made casts of stones or modeled what had most impressed them during their tour of the cave. Their work complements Veber’s cast, taken from the dried-up bed of the Bílý Stream. Its form resembles a relief map or a fossil and serves as a memory trace of a specific environmental upheaval—the drying up of the stream and the subsequent death of aquatic organisms.

The theme of this year’s residency was the memory of stones and, at the same time, a tribute to the artist and curator Jiří Valoch, who celebrated his 80th birthday on September 6. Part of his artistic practice—in the form of photographs, performances, and interventions—took place in the Moravian Karst landscape during the 1970s. Veber does not build on this tradition through quotation or reconstruction; rather, he approaches it through a similar way of thinking. He shares with Valoch an emphasis on the process of observing the landscape and noticing hidden yet essential details in which a message about the memory and experience of a specific place is encoded.

For Imrich Veber, the question of visuality is also central. For him, an image is not merely a documentary imprint of reality, but becomes a kind of cartographic report from the Anthropocene. Through various media and methods of recording, he creates a subjective map of the landscape that reflects both the devastating impact of human activity and humanity’s efforts to understand and care for the landscape.

Above and Below is, in the end, not merely an exhibition about the Moravian Karst. It raises the question of how we come to know the landscape at all: whether it can be understood from an outside perspective, or whether it is necessary to enter it, move through it, and touch it. Here, the landscape ceases to be a mere object of observation and becomes an active partner in the process—a place bearing the traces of natural processes as well as human presence. 

We would like to thank the following for their collaboration on the exhibition and during the residency:  

The artists from the “Art on a Trip” workshop: Hedvika, Radim, Luděk, Koleta, Eliška, Vesna, Dobroš, René, Zorka, Lada, Toník, Jolanka, Matouš, Adrianka, Karin. 

To the climbers: Vašek Čáň, Meda Čáňová, Míša Černocká, Kuba Hlahůlek, František Hrdý, Dobroslav Chrobák, Vojta Kala, Pavel Klement, Teru Klementová, Honza Knobloch, Pavel Payne, Táňa Payne Šedová, Jana Písaříková, Marek Polák, Ondřej Mican Slavíček, Eliška Sychrová, Honza Valoušek, Edita Vopatová (Czech Republic champion and runner-up in sport climbing).