Last year he revealed his face in two documentaries, now for the first time he exhibits under his civic name. Štěpán Soukup is Epos 257. His new large-scale audiovisual installation Landform combines projection, sound and object into a complex environment thematizing the relationship between civilization and nature. The exhibition is on view in the main hall of Galerie Mánes until March 8, 2026.

The Landform project builds on the diorama in Vanitas, which Soukup exhibited at the DOX Center for Contemporary Art in 2021. Here, it was possible to enter a scenery made of cut-out pieces of billboards and both physically and metaphorically glimpse the advertising world from behind its backdrop. This time, in the generous space of Galerie Mánes, the billboards are on display in their entirety. 

A set of twenty objects of various sizes with cut-out holes, suspended from a structural scaffolding, disrupts the idea of an idyllic landscape and brings it into conflict with reality. The visitor is confronted with the questions of who and how shapes the landscape today and what is our own position in it. The human view can never encompass the whole – reality is always shown to us from one side only, while the other remains hidden. Thus, the installation gradually reveals that every face has a flip side, which is not – and often should not be – visible.

In daylight, visitors will see an ambient exhibition of abstract art, which in its characteristics refers to the current institutional exposition of world modern art. Monolithic asphalt paintings fill the surfaces of the objects on one side, while black canvases that let light through cut-out holes fill the other.

It is only after dark that the meaning of the cut-out holes is revealed. The opening hours of the exhibition (noon to midnight) correspond to this. After 6pm, the hanging objects become projection surfaces, and the canvases display records of landscapes – from skies and drifting clouds to thickets, fields and vegetation in different seasons – in the cut-out apertures. On the screens on the other side of the objects, the visitor sees a projection of billboard advertising – a virtual image of an idyllic world in which something is missing. The evening (night) installation also includes a soundtrack. The authentic bustle of the environment can be heard from each displayed location. At the same time, the acknowledged structural elements disrupt the illusion and remind us of the presence of technology, industry and infrastructure – integral parts of the landscape. The whole thus creates a multi-layered image of an environment in which an idealized idea and its mechanized reality coexist.

The artist did not choose the space of Galerie Mánes for his exhibition at random, but purposefully rented it. "The only way to have an exhibition in the main hall of Galerie Mánes is to rent the space commercially. The content doesn't seem to be the issue at all. In essence, it is the same as renting a billboard. And that's also what the whole gallery programme looks like," explains Soukup. "The analogy to the metaphor that the Landform exhibition plays with - that somehow it looks (tries to look) like something, but in reality it's completely different - I think fits very well here too. Or how to understand that the only way to have an exhibition at Mánes is to pay dearly for it?" adds the artist.

Stěpán Soukup (*1982), who has exhibited for many years under the pseudonym Epos 257, is a Czech visual artist working with urban environments, iconography and the iconology of the city. He studied at the Academy of Arts and Crafts in Prague from 2008 to 2016 and completed his doctoral studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in 2025.His work often focuses on sensitive social themes, including the issue of public space, its boundaries and the ways in which it is used and abused.

He has presented his projects in solo exhibitions (Trafo Gallery, Dancing House Gallery, National Gallery, Prague City Museum, Bratislava City Museum) and collective exhibitions in the Czech Republic (Prague City Gallery, DOX Centre for Contemporary Art) and abroad (Strasbourg, Berlin, London, Manchester, Shanghai, Brussels). In 2018, he was awarded 1st place in the Most Beautiful Czech Books of the Year competition. In 2025, he revealed his face in the documentaries Public Works (dir. Vladimír Turner) and Is It Worth It!? (dir. Jan Strejcovský).

Opening Hours:12:00 - 0:00 

Website of the gallery: www.manes.cz

Website of the project: www.landform.cz

Concept: Štěpán Soukup

Graphic Design: Jan Matoušek

Architecture: Sausan Haj Abdová

Production: Jakub Stránský, Štefan Motika

Video Editing: Kajetán Adler Jablonský

Sound Editing:Dominik Dolejší

Projection Technology: Jan Hladil, Julius Štefan

Custodian: Štěpán Soukup