On 24 February 2026 at 6 pm we will launch a new publication by Vojtěch Kovářík The Desire for Something Permanent, published by janfreiberg.cz. The launch follows the artist's exhibition from autumn 2025, which was prepared for the gallery by Eva Bendová.

The publication presents Kovářík's current work focused on the search for a balance between impermanence and permanence through motifs of everyday objects and work with light and space in the medium of linocut. The book contains a text by Eva Bendová and an interview with Jan Freiberg. Bendová quotes Karel Šiktanc in the introduction: 'Four empty chairs stood there with their backs to all sides of the world (...)' and develops the theme of permanence as a basic human need. She recalls both the baroque symbolism of vanitas and the Old Testament scepticism of Ecclesiastes and writes: "The imprint of the matrix is a fixation of the fixed, a double step towards the permanent, universal world of the everyday."

In Kovářík's prints, chairs, tables or boxes become metaphors for human presence, relationships and space. The artist develops his own method, which he calls "pointillism of industrial reproduction" - he transforms a photograph into a matrix using a grid and diagonal grid. The process of engraving and the print itself are here a way to transform a fleeting moment into a fixed image.

About the work of Vojtěch Kovářík, we will hear from Eva Bendová, and welcome the author of the graphic design Michal Smejkal and the publisher Jan Freiberg, who will present the publication together with the author. 

Vojtěch Kovářík (1976) is one of the outstanding representatives of Czech linocut. He studied at the Secondary Industrial School of Graphic Arts and the Higher Vocational School of Graphic Arts in Prague, and graduated from the studio of graphic arts and drawing at the Faculty of Graphic Arts of the Brno University of Technology. He has been working on free graphic art for a long time, regularly exhibits at home and abroad, and teaches at the Václav Hollar School of Higher Education in Prague.

The publishing house janfreiberg.cz also published a book Work on Paper by painter Ondřej Maleček with a text by Radoslava Schmelzová in 2025.