What do a rapper paying tribute to a late beatmaker, a Slovak multi-instrumentalist awarded by an international jazz jury, and a painter who compares his canvases to a Balkan disco have in common? All three met at Kampus Hybernská in the first half of 2026. And that was just the beginning. The HYB4 Gallery took home the 2025 VIZIUM award, four exhibitions rotated through C.0, and Kampus opened its own art studios for the first time. Read our overview of the first six months of the year. You can find what we have planned for the summer at the end of the article. And there is plenty to look forward to.
This year's musical half-year had a clear theme: it was a time for album launches. And it was a time for great records.
In January, the series was kicked off by Pilsen-based Blue Chesterfield with their EP Cathedral, where piano, organ, and aggressive guitars create a sound somewhere between art rock and a western landscape. In February, Slovak multi-instrumentalist Sisa Fehér returned, this time with her full band. Her album Mammatus, named after pre-storm clouds, won the Esprit Jazz Awards, and an international jury led by drummer and Grammy winner Marcel Woloski selected it as the best Slovak jazz album of 2024 out of 27 entries. Returning to Kampus was an opportunity to hear this award-winning work live.
March brought three launches in a row. Indiga Muse presented the EP Auto-Genesis. Dark beats, ethereal choirs, and Slavic mythology used as a source, not just a backdrop. Brno-based Amplion launched their debut EP inostranstvo, whose name captures the exact feeling: being among people while not falling into them. And the highlight was a sold-out double concert Hello Marcel. The Svitavy-based fun-dance duo, who describe their own sound as a soundtrack to period absurdity, christened their album The Toughest Tough Guy together with Brno's mmnk.
The end of March then belonged to Nauzea Orchestra, an alternative band from Ústí nad Labem that released their sixth album, Store the Darkness, on the Indies Scope label in February 2026. Their current sound builds on krautrock motifs, minimalism, and post-punk energy. Tighter and more aggressive than before, yet still full of perspective and danceable grooves. Performing alongside them was a solo project Ctib, whose creator named his sound discoegopunk, combining DIY punk roots with electronic arrangements.
In May, rapper Shizzle arrived with the album Unfinished, whose title references Schubert's 8th Symphony. It is an album completed after the tragic death of beatmaker Filip Karlík, who died in an accident in Prague in September 2023. The last Friday in May then belonged to two solo projects. Cyril Kaplan christened his album of drum miniatures This Is My Space, originally recorded as a film soundtrack, and Zdeněk Lichnovský brought his new release I'll Play Mitski and Lock Myself at Home.
This year brought HYB4 Galerie the VIZIUM 2025 award from the Czech Academy of Visual Arts in the Institution category for a long-term, year-round program contributing to the development of contemporary visual culture. It is a recognition of work that is built gradually, exhibition by exhibition.
The exhibition year opened with a site-specific intervention by Jan Stolín titled The Sheen of Night, extending from the end of 2025 to January 24, 2026. Stolín, a visual artist and educator at the Faculty of Arts and Architecture at TU Liberec, works with space, light, and material. His installation transformed the white gallery space into a dialogue between two extremes. A golden drapery, resisting capture, stood against black pigment flaking off the wall and spreading across the floor. Curator Karel Srp described the exhibition as a tension between the artificial and the raw, the blurred and the precise. On one side, a digital print enlarging a detail to the limit of legibility; on the other, a drawing directly on the empty walls as a physical act.
Painter Petr Gruber opened the year with landscape paintings in which time and timelessness pulse behind every detail. He was followed by Aleš Novák with the exhibition Pendler. A portrait of an artist who crosses the border between nature and the city, between noise and silence, every single day.
Since June 12, the gallery has been hosting the exhibition by Jan Vytiska titled The village you really shouldn’t have gone to. The exhibition offers an entry into a distinct mythological world of characters, rituals, and symbols, where Wallachian folklore merges with figures moving on the boundary between the human and the mythical. Beneath the dark layer of intense themes, the viewer finds meticulous work with ornament and folk decor. Lace embroidery and symbolic motifs, in which the darkness of the paintings also carries silence and delicacy.
A major highlight of the half-year was the first residency program HYB4 Art Studios. From 27 applications, an expert committee selected nine artists and collectives who will receive a studio in the center of Prague for two years, curatorial support, and access to Kampus exhibition program. October 1 will see the first event as part of the academic year opening Open Studios Day.
Parallel to the exhibitions, HYB4 Galerie hosted a lecture series from March to April dedicated to the 170th anniversary of Sigmund Freud's birth, prepared in collaboration with Kamila Ženatá. Six evenings, six guests. Therapists alongside art historians, psychoanalysis alongside surrealism, the work of Toyen alongside the question of what artificial intelligence does with the unconscious.
HYB4 Čítárna hosted a series in the first half of the year titled We Are What We Read with guests who are not primarily associated with literature. Lawyers and judges, public media journalists, and fashion designers all took part. Each evening opened with a simple but rarely asked question: what do you read, and what does it do to you? The answers provided specific reading recommendations as well as unexpected confessions from behind the scenes of various professions.
Poetry readings brought authors from different corners of the country and the world to one stage. Collections such as Formaldehyd, Kosti nebo Doma v bezpečí presented four distinct poetics and ways in which poets navigate between the intimate and the public. Debut voices were also given space as part of the RP Presents segment.
HYB4 Film included the documentary by Věra Chytilová Searching for Ester about the screenwriter and artist Ester Krumbachová, one of the key figures of the Czech New Wave. The program was complemented by a screening of short films by FAMU students as part of the Hranice Fest festival, themed pub quizzes dedicated to horror, sci-fi, and films by female directors, and a lecture by Pavel Turek and Štěpán Šanda on the role of music in concluding film narratives.
Cirkulární dílna has launched a new series of workshops in collaboration with the SheBuilds project titled How to Do It Yourself Without a Handyman. It offers exactly what it says: practical skills without the middleman. The series included drilling, carpentry basics, making stools, bird feeders, and planters, as well as a linocut workshop where participants took home their own printing matrix.
Summer will move part of the Kampus program outside to the backyard. HYB4 Hudba has prepared a series of open-air evenings.
Kicking off on July 8th Stray Unicorn PRIDE, a spectacular celebration of queer culture featuring the one-woman band Marley Wildthing, the glitter-punk project Stray Unicorn, and a drag performance. In the following weeks, we will rotate between DJ sets by Josef Sedloň and Strýček Míša from Radio 1, the reggae and dub project Untitled Dub Family, organic techno from Sady collective , and the recurring Kampus Fiesta with DJ Gadjo CZ. Admission is free.
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Every Thursday starting July 16, the front courtyard will host an open-air cinema. The summer 3kino will present eight Polish films as part of the Polish Film Festival 2026. Expect intimate romances, coming-of-age stories, and a portrait of scientist Simona Kossak, who left her family to live in the Białowieża wilderness. Tickets are 150 CZK; in case of bad weather, screenings will move to E.0 Sál.
The exhibition in the C.0 HYB4 Galerie will remain open throughout the summer with the exhibition of Jan Vytiska (until August 24, free admission).
On August 5, HYB4 Čítárna will host Cabaret Chimera and the following day We Are What We Read: PRIDE edition featuring prominent human rights activists.
And if you need a break from the heat, stop by our café. You’ll cool down quickly under the misting system, and our summer drinks and treats—on tap and beyond—will keep your spirits high. The café is open Monday to Friday from 9:00 AM to 10:00 PM, and Saturday from 10:00 AM to 9:00 PM.
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Have a wonderful summer! 🌞
You can find the full summer program on the Kampus Hybernská website.
