The HYB4 Galeire at Kampus Hybernská opens an exhibition by painter Jan Vytiska on June 11th. The show invites viewers into a world where folklore and myth meet contemporary imagination, and where one never quite knows what awaits behind the next canvas. The exhibition runs until August 24, 2026. Admission is voluntary.
Jan Vytiska (born 1985) does not search for his world; he simply lives in it. The landscape beneath the Radhošť mountain, where he grew up, still defines his imaginative coordinates today. Wallachian folklore, legends, rituals, and creatures from the space between the human and the mythical are neither props nor nostalgia here. They are realities that have come to pass.
Vytiska’s work has long balanced on the boundary between the local and the universal, between personal memory and collective myth. It is precisely this ability to translate a specific landscape and experience into a visual language understood far beyond the borders of Wallachia that makes him one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Czech painting.
Vytiska’s canvases pulse with life and are masterfully colorful, yet their greatest strength lies in details that the viewer may not even consciously register. In the lace, symbolic elements, and delicate floral motifs, a silence and softness hidden within an otherwise dark visual world break through to the surface. Irony sits alongside gravity, and folk ornament alongside existential anxiety.
"I have known Jan Vytiska for many years, even from before I was a curator myself. It is all the more gratifying to present his work now in the space of HYB4 Galeire, not far from the Municipal House—a place inextricably linked to Alfons Mucha’s Slav Epic. From the beginning, I was guided by the idea of creating a kind of small Vytiska epic here: a distinctive and cohesive bestiary of characters, beings, stories, and symbols growing out of a specific landscape, memory, and mythology.
The intention was not to create a series of paintings describing individual events, but to present an immersive experience reflecting the very moment of encounter. Something like the moment you step into a place you were never meant to enter: the music suddenly stops, and everyone present turns their gaze toward the newcomer," says exhibition curator Michal Štochl.
Vytiska’s visual signature is well-established in the Czech context, and his ability to transform local subject matter into a universally understood visual language is opening doors for him beyond the domestic scene as well.
Vytiska studied in the New Media Studio at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Ostrava. In 2011, he received the UniCredit Bank Young Award at Art Prague, and a year later, he was a finalist for the Critics' Prize for Young Painting. His most extensive exhibition to date was presented by the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in 2023. Since 2026, he has been a resident of the HYB4 Art Studios program at Kampus Hybernská. He lives and works in Prague.
Jan Vytiska: The village you really shouldn't have gone to
C.0 HYB4 Galerie, Kampus Hybernská, Hybernská 4, Prague 1
Curator: Michal Štochl
Opening: June 11, 2026, from 6:00 PM
Exhibition duration: June 12 – August 24, 2026
Opening hours: Mon – Sat 10:00 AM – 8:00 PM (entry via Kavárna Kampus)
Admission: Voluntary
Photo: © Kampus Hybernská
