The exhibition Learning from the Landscape maps the dialogue between Gočár Gallery and Gallery of the City of Pardubice. Two institutions operating in the same city but working with different exhibition approaches meet here. The common denominator is landscape. Not as a stable image of the seen reality, but as a changing field of memory, power and cultural meanings.

The exhibition is based on the collections of the Gočár Gallery and its long-standing specialization in landscape painting, which forms one of the key lines of the collection strategy and permanent exhibitions. In the selected works, the landscape opens up as a living organism and a complex system of relationships. From existential experience in Jan Smetana, through the way of seeing in the work of Vladimír Kokolia, based on concentrated observation and the gradual revelation of structures, rhythms and connections, to archetypal connections and planes of reflection in the works of Otto Placht and Adéla Součková.

The site-specific installation by Xénie Poldaufová connects painting with the digital environment. It highlights the political mechanisms affecting the landscape and the world we move in. The activist statement offers us not only a critical perspective, but also pathways to possible solutions.

The monumental mural in the Gočár Gallery space by Stach Szumski and Tosi Kiliś creates a fictional ornamental language referring to the symbolic systems of humanity throughout history and thematizes human domination over the planet, from traces of hunting to warnings about radioactivity and the toxic effects of industry.

The exhibition Lessons from the Landscape is complemented by additional interventions by Larissa Crunțeanu and Jiří Žák, which expand the thematic field to include performative and sonic planes. Together, the artists create a layered account of the landscape as a space of (post)learning where past, present and possible futures collide.

Exhibiting Artists: Larisa Crunțeanu, Xénie Poldaufová, Stach Szumski & Tosia Kiliś, Jiří Žák

From the collections of the Gočár Gallery: Vladimír Kokolia, Jan Smetana, Adéla Součková, Daniel Pitín, Otto Placht

Curator: Pavel Liška

Co-curator of interventions: Piotr Sikora

Co-organizer: Gallery of the City of Pardubice