In the first part of our series, we introduce a trio connected by something perhaps unexpected. Each of them comes from a different background, works with a different medium, and explores different themes. Yet, they all operate in a space where reality begins to blur with imagination, memories, myths, or what remains hidden at first glance.
At the end of 2025, we launched an open call for the new HYB4 Art Studios residency program, aimed at supporting contemporary art, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the development of dialogue between artists, professionals, and the public. Twenty-seven individuals and collectives from various artistic fields applied. An expert committee ultimately selected nine of them.
The selected residents have access to their own studio in the center of Prague for two years, along with curatorial support and the opportunity to participate in the exhibition program of Kampus Hybernská.
In the first part of our series, we introduce a trio connected by something perhaps unexpected. Each of them comes from a different background, works with a different medium, and explores different themes. Yet, they all operate in a space where reality begins to blur with imagination, memories, myths, or what remains hidden at first glance.
What if there were controlled energy orbs being passed between a secret laboratory? And what if the only journalist who uncovered their existence paid for his investigation with his life?
It is precisely on the border between fact and fiction that photographer Viktoriia Tymonova operates. In her work, she explores the intersection of the magical, the conspiratorial, the paranormal, and the inexplicable. She draws from family stories and personal experience, interested in the tension between reality and fiction, history and alternative history, as well as the movement along the line between seriousness and irony.
How such an approach can look in practice is shown, for example, by her photographic project Balls, published on the platform PHROOM. In it, she creates a fictional but disturbingly believable conspiracy theory about mysterious "controlled energy orbs," a vanished city, and a journalist who discovered their trail too late.
In the project I could have known you, but I never did, published in the Latvian magazine FK, she reconstructs fictional memories of an unknown woman from a photograph found in a nursing home in Brno. This story becomes a metaphor for finding one's own place in a new country.
Viktoriia holds a master's degree in journalism and is currently studying photography. She is part of the European platform Futures Photography and a winner of the Carte Blanche Étudiants award, presented by the Paris Photo fair. She has participated in photography festivals such as OFF Bratislava, Fotofestival Uničov, GETXOPHOTO, Fotograf Zone Festival, and Circulation(s) and has also exhibited at Paris Photo itself.
You can follow her work on Instagram (@viktoriiatymonova).
What if the stories and legends we heard as children before bed weren't just long-forgotten fairy tales?
Painter Jan Vytiska (born 1985 in Prague) draws from folklore, folk religiosity, and the aesthetics of folk horror in his work. Although born in Prague, he grew up in the Wallachia region, an environment where rituals, masks, faith and superstition are a natural part of the landscape and collective memory. He translates these very motifs into a contemporary visual language.
He is interested in the darker side of tradition. Figures of devils, saints, demons, or anonymous characters in folk costumes become carriers of the tension between faith and fear, the sacred and the grotesque in his paintings. He does not perceive folklore as a nostalgic memory of the past, but as a living, changing organism that carries both ritual power and the unsettling potential of myth.
Jan Vytiska graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Ostrava (Intermedia department). Since 2007, he has exhibited both individually and in group shows at numerous Czech and international galleries, including Prague's Trafo Gallery, the Jiří Švestka Gallery, the group exhibition Vanitas at DOX, as well as abroad in Warsaw, Bucharest, and Paris.
We recommend visiting his current exhibition The village you really shouldn’t have gone to at C.0 HYB4 Galerie, which runs until August 24th. The exhibition will conclude with a guided tour.
You can follow Jan's work on Instagram (@jan_vytiska) or on Facebook.
Art doesn't have to be a rare object hidden away in a gallery. Sometimes, it can be something as simple as a dumpling nailed to a kitchen wall.
That is exactly how Phila Primus (born 1991 in Düsseldorf)—a multimedia artist, poet, lyricist, and the new resident at HYB4 Art Studios—talks about art. Her work conveys a sense of heightened consciousness intertwined with biological, temporal, physical, social, linguistic and symbolic orders.
For her, the body and consciousness serve as the starting point for a visual exploration of the unconscious and the relationship between freedom and determination, whether genetic, cultural, personal, or social. In doing so, she builds on the tradition of surrealism, which reveals the absurdity of reality through contemplation, imagination, and reflection.
Phila comes from a Czech-German-American family. Her American mother, Suzanne Pastor, a curator and photographer, was a co-founder of the Prague House of Photography in the early 1990s. Her father is a Czech art historian.
Surrealism, which she describes as being "all around us," has been a natural part of her life since childhood:
"The line between life and art has always been thin for me, and art was never something rare; I grew up surrounded by it. For instance, we have an old dumpling nailed to the wall in our kitchen," she says Phila Primus in an interview for Czech Radio Vltava.
In addition to visual art, she is also dedicated to poetry. She has been published in magazines such as Babylon, Revue Prostor and Tvar, as well as on the website Nedělní chvilka poezie, and she is currently preparing a collection titled Privilegium.
You can follow her work on Instagram (@philaprimus) or read her poems and profile on the iTvar website.
At first glance, three completely different artistic paths. A photographer exploring conspiracies and paranormal phenomena. A painter bringing Wallachian demons to life. A multimedia poet for whom surrealism is a natural part of everyday life.
But upon closer inspection, we find a common thread. All three move in their work on the boundary of what can be rationally explained, documented, and verified.
Viktoriia works with conspiracy theories and the paranormal, Jan with folk magic, demons, and rituals, and Phila with the subconscious and the absurdity hidden in seemingly ordinary situations. Each of them shows in a different way that the line between reality and fiction can be much thinner than we expect.
And it is precisely in this space of uncertainty that the most interesting artistic questions often arise.
On open house day, on Thursday October 1st, you will be able to look directly into their studios. The event will be part of the new academic year kickoff and will offer a glimpse behind the scenes of the entire residency program.
Each of you may be drawn to something different: photographic work with conspiracy and memory, painting drawing from folk belief, or poetry moving on the edge of dreams and the mundane.
You can learn about the rest of the HYB4 Art Studios residents in the next parts of this series.
Keep up with the latest news from HYB4 Galerie and Kampus Hybernská on the Kampus Hybernská website and on Instagram HYB4 Galerie.
