The title of the upcoming exhibition hyperbolically suggests a rendezvous of three artists from Ostrava at Prague’s Beseder Gallery—three distinctive perspectives on the world. The exhibition continues a series in which the gallery presents established Czech artists alongside a younger generation. Jiří Surůvka has invited two of his former students from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Ostrava to exhibit with him.

Jiří Surůvka may be a newly retired professor, but he remains a vibrant and unmistakable figure of the North Moravian cultural scene. During more than two decades at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Ostrava, he mentored dozens of accomplished artists. As he likes to say with characteristic irony, many people from his generation and many of his graduates moved to Prague, “but then there are those who stayed in Ostrava”. Together they helped create a distinctive artistic environment whose central figures include Surůvka himself and Daniel Balabán. Surůvka’s work spans performance, objects, collage, and other media. With his trademark exaggeration and absurd humour—often unsettling beneath the laughter—he exposes political and social absurdities. Performance art has been an integral part of his practice since the 1980s. Characters he created, such as Batman and Policeman, have become iconic.

Martina Strakošová (nicknamed “Chmurka” during her studies) belongs to the youngest generation of artists. She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Ostrava only a few years ago. Her practice moves fluidly between painting, object-making, video, and performance. In her paintings, she draws viewers into a dreamlike world—or perhaps an underworld—where seemingly naïve fairy-tale scenes intertwine with darker aspects of the artist’s inner landscape, always tempered by a sense of irony or mischievous humour. Strakošová also inherited a strong performative impulse from Jiří Surůvka’s studio. Performing as DJ Chmurka, she combines her own music and video in live appearances.

Martin Froulík (known in the studio as “Froula”) graduated from Surůvka’s New Media Studio in 2010. At first glance, he may appear to be an abstract painter, yet a closer look reveals figures or landscapes concealed behind a peculiar veil or a torn network of forms. Froulík combines realistic painting with stencils and spray paint. He remains a close friend of his former teacher, and the two have exhibited together many times—in galleries throughout the Czech Republic as well as in Dresden and Düsseldorf. Froulík also shares another artistic discipline with Surůvka: performance. He performs in a cabaret duo with fellow North Moravian artist Zdeněk Janošec, known as Benda. Together they also work with puppets and perform with the Ostrava Puppet Theatre.