New exhibition: Bystrík Klčo, Margarita Ivy – You can’t return, you are here

22 srpna, 2026
TZ
english, Obecné, umění

What we know intimately from the past re-emerges before us with the passage of time – in an altered form, with a different meaning, and a new perspective.

The new exhibition at Karpuchina Gallery, You can’t return, you are here, opens on September 1, 2026. Featuring joint work by artists Margarita Ivy and Bystrík Klčo, it offers viewers an insight into the processes through which our environment, as well as our relationship to what has passed, is transformed.

Thematically, the work of both artists moves between questions of memory, the transformation of identity, and an exploration of how personal experience leaves its mark on the present. Their approach is rooted in mutuality, listening, and a close creative dialogue. For them, collaboration is not a mere blending of two styles, but a seamless process of bending, layering, and interconnecting everyday objects, garments, and fragments. The artists work with translucent casts and the transformation of materials, where familiar shapes collide with new forms – allowing the objects to oscillate between intimate memory and objective detachment.

“Working together represents a space of constant listening for us, where personal memories are gradually transformed through mutual dialogue into new, shared forms,” describes one of the artists, Margarita Ivy.

The series of works You can’t return, you are here grows out of an exploration of the instability of our memories and the fear of losing continuity with what we have experienced. In their installations, reality is transformed into a space for an individual moving between the need to return and the realization that the past can now only be viewed from a new perspective. A sensitive, multilayered process of transformation permeates the entire project, where what we know from the past resurfaces – yet slightly different and with a new meaning.

„I watched them engage in an inspiring dialogue about the detail in relation to the whole, as they spoke of something that cannot exist unless it is jointly authorized. (Which is no walk in the park),“ adds the exhibition’s curator, Michal Pěchouček.

The exhibition will open with a vernissage on September 1, 2026, and will run at Karpuchina Gallery until October 18, 2026. It will offer viewers a space to reflect on what from our past truly remains within us.

Bystrík Klčo (*2002) is a Slovak intermedia artist currently living and working in Prague. She moved to the Czech Republic in 2021 to study in the Fine Art III Studio at UMPRUM in Prague under the guidance of Michal Pěchouček and Dominik Gajarský. She is currently pursuing her Master’s degree at UMPRUM’s Art and Technology Studio, led by Lucie Rosenfeldová and Julie Žil Vostálová.

Bystrík’s artistic practice often aesthetics and symbolically revisits the past to examine how the cultures in which we grew up shaped us into certain norms that can have long-lasting, sometimes negative consequences. She works primarily with specific objects, abstracting them into symbols and altering their design – often in a subversive way – to point out the constructed nature of normativity. Although rooted in conceptual thinking, her work remains deeply personal and grounded in her own lived experience.

Bystrík has exhibited in galleries and independent spaces across the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and has participated in art festivals and events within the local underground scene. Selected exhibitions include Cvrlikat: Umění z ptačí perspektivy (Chirping: Art from a Bird’s-Eye Perspective) at the House of Arts in Ústí nad Labem (2024) and This Is Not a Memoir at Polansky Gallery in Prague (2024).

Margarita Ivy (*1998) is an artist originally from Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. She currently lives and works in Prague, where she completed her bachelor’s degree at UMPRUM in the Fine Arts Studio III under Michal Pěchouček. She subsequently continued with a master’s degree under the guidance of Lucie Rosenfeldová and Žil Julie Vostalová.

Margarita’s artistic inquiry is deeply rooted in themes of mortality, personal memory, and the passage of time. In crafting her reflective aesthetic, she draws from a reservoir of childhood memories and layered personal symbolism. A key element of her practice is working with epoxy resin, treating it as both a malleable and a preservative medium. Through it, she explores transparency, layering, texture, and the fixation of fleeting moments – whether through abstracted motifs or sacred post-mortem narratives of animals. For her, this process becomes a vital means of self-preservation and a way to preserve intimate, memory-laden moments. Through them, she reminds us that contemplating mortality does not have to be a journey into darkness, but can be a process that brings understanding and solace.

She has presented her work on both the Czech and international art scenes, with a particular focus on Central and Eastern Europe. She has participated in international art fairs, including Art Fair Kraków in Poland, and her work will be presented at Contemporary Istanbul this year. Selected exhibitions include Predjaří – Prchavé existence at the Empire Greenhouse in the Royal Garden of Prague Castle, Prague; MY at DOT. Contemporary, Bratislava; Confession at Telegraph Gallery, Olomouc; and 100 days at NIKA Gallery at UMPRUM, Prague. Her work has also been featured in group exhibitions, including US at DOT. Contemporary Art Gallery in Bratislava and Cvrlikat: Umění z ptačí perspektivy at the House of Arts in Ústí nad Labem.

Karpuchina Gallery, a young and progressive contemporary art gallery in Prague, has gradually established itself on the Czech art scene since its foundation in 2016. It presents a varied and carefully curated program of contemporary Czech and foreign authors in an innovative language and current context. It focuses on the dialogue between the viewer and the works of art, thereby strengthening the public’s relationship with contemporary art. The main exhibition space of 260 m² is located on Rybná Street, and the gallery’s logo is a fish, inspired by the history of the building, which served as a fish market in 1981.