Tereza Bartůňková and Julie Hrnčířová: Layers, Landscapes, Shapeshifters
27 5 — 28 6 2026
Saturday–Sunday, 11:00 AM–6:00 PM Closed on June 13–14.
27 5 — 28 6 2026
Saturday–Sunday, 11:00 AM–6:00 PM Closed on June 13–14.
The collaborative project by artists Tereza Bartůňková and Julie Hrnčířová centres on the relationship between the human body and the natural world. Drawing inspiration from protective strategies found in nature — such as mimicry and camouflage — the artists use photography, drawing, and multimedia installation to create a space for reflection on concealment, masking, and the act of blending into one’s surroundings.
The project originated in a site-specific installation created in 2023 for Ankali, a community-oriented music club in Prague. There, the artists combined photographs printed on various materials with found natural elements and remnants of urban life, exploring the relationships between place, materiality, and image. This exploration now continues at The House, where they present the outcomes of new material and technological processes while further expanding their multimedia language.
The resulting environment unfolds as a spatial composition in which photographs and drawings intertwine with sculptural installations accompanied by an ambient sonic layer. The gallery becomes a site for rest, refuge, meditation, and contemplation — a space attuned to processes of transformation, both in the world around us and within ourselves.
In nature, mimicry is not merely a passive merging with the surrounding environment. Rather, it emerges from a continual process of transformation and adaptation — a search for new forms capable of sustaining life within shifting conditions. As human beings, we similarly navigate an ever-changing landscape of social roles, expectations, and identities that continuously shape and demand our adaptation. Each such situation calls for a form of “shapeshifting”: the capacity to transform one’s behaviour, perception, or sense of self in response to new realities.
Yet adaptation is never entirely automatic. Transformation always contains an element of creativity and conscious agency. We do not adapt simply by imitating our surroundings, but by actively inventing new modes of existence. The artists’ engagement with nature therefore extends beyond observation of natural forms and processes. Nature becomes a site of connection to deeper sources of intuition, transformation, and creativity from which we may draw. It is precisely this process of attunement to natural principles — and the possibilities for imagination and inner flexibility that such attunement may open — that the exhibition Layers, Landscapes, Shapeshifters invites viewers to experience.
Tereza Bartůňková is a Prague-based visual artist whose interdisciplinary practice moves between audiovisual art, illustration, scenography, photography, and light and object design. She creates spatial and light-based drawings, responding to sound while exploring relationships between light, darkness, and space. Her work focuses on atmosphere, imagination, corporeality, emotionality, and the interplay between inner and outer worlds. Inspired by natural elements, raw materials, mythology, and fairy tales, she has recently been working intensively with glass, further developing her long-standing interest in light and drawing. Alongside her independent practice, she collaborates as a scenographer, lighting designer, and illustrator with Czech theatres and experimental art platforms, while also developing international collaborations across Europe.
Julie Hrnčířová is a visual artist based in Norway. She graduated from École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles, France, and regularly exhibits in institutions across the Czech Republic, Norway, and France. Working primarily with photography, she frequently incorporates found materials, wood, metal, and natural elements into her installations. Her practice explores dialogues between different media and the ways in which we engage with the objects surrounding us. She focuses on public space, urban environments, ephemeral still lifes, discarded objects, and their potential for reuse. Alongside her artistic projects, she has also produced socially engaged documentary series and is currently working on a book about forcibly sterilised women together with journalist Anna Košlerová.
Acknowledgements: Tomáš Carl Allen from Polagraph Gallery for the donation of Polaroids; Juliána Chomová from Fat Cat Press for silkscreen prints; and MeetFactory, Tomáš Soldán, Jonáš Verešpej, and Ankali for their support.
The collaborative project by artists Tereza Bartůňková and Julie Hrnčířová centres on the relationship between the human body and the natural world. Drawing inspiration from protective strategies found in nature — such as mimicry and camouflage — the artists use photography, drawing, and multimedia installation to create a space for reflection on concealment, masking, and the act of blending into one’s surroundings.
The project originated in a site-specific installation created in 2023 for Ankali, a community-oriented music club in Prague. There, the artists combined photographs printed on various materials with found natural elements and remnants of urban life, exploring the relationships between place, materiality, and image. This exploration now continues at The House, where they present the outcomes of new material and technological processes while further expanding their multimedia language.
The resulting environment unfolds as a spatial composition in which photographs and drawings intertwine with sculptural installations accompanied by an ambient sonic layer. The gallery becomes a site for rest, refuge, meditation, and contemplation — a space attuned to processes of transformation, both in the world around us and within ourselves.
In nature, mimicry is not merely a passive merging with the surrounding environment. Rather, it emerges from a continual process of transformation and adaptation — a search for new forms capable of sustaining life within shifting conditions. As human beings, we similarly navigate an ever-changing landscape of social roles, expectations, and identities that continuously shape and demand our adaptation. Each such situation calls for a form of “shapeshifting”: the capacity to transform one’s behaviour, perception, or sense of self in response to new realities.
Yet adaptation is never entirely automatic. Transformation always contains an element of creativity and conscious agency. We do not adapt simply by imitating our surroundings, but by actively inventing new modes of existence. The artists’ engagement with nature therefore extends beyond observation of natural forms and processes. Nature becomes a site of connection to deeper sources of intuition, transformation, and creativity from which we may draw. It is precisely this process of attunement to natural principles — and the possibilities for imagination and inner flexibility that such attunement may open — that the exhibition Layers, Landscapes, Shapeshifters invites viewers to experience.
Tereza Bartůňková is a Prague-based visual artist whose interdisciplinary practice moves between audiovisual art, illustration, scenography, photography, and light and object design. She creates spatial and light-based drawings, responding to sound while exploring relationships between light, darkness, and space. Her work focuses on atmosphere, imagination, corporeality, emotionality, and the interplay between inner and outer worlds. Inspired by natural elements, raw materials, mythology, and fairy tales, she has recently been working intensively with glass, further developing her long-standing interest in light and drawing. Alongside her independent practice, she collaborates as a scenographer, lighting designer, and illustrator with Czech theatres and experimental art platforms, while also developing international collaborations across Europe.
Julie Hrnčířová is a visual artist based in Norway. She graduated from École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles, France, and regularly exhibits in institutions across the Czech Republic, Norway, and France. Working primarily with photography, she frequently incorporates found materials, wood, metal, and natural elements into her installations. Her practice explores dialogues between different media and the ways in which we engage with the objects surrounding us. She focuses on public space, urban environments, ephemeral still lifes, discarded objects, and their potential for reuse. Alongside her artistic projects, she has also produced socially engaged documentary series and is currently working on a book about forcibly sterilised women together with journalist Anna Košlerová.
Acknowledgements: Tomáš Carl Allen from Polagraph Gallery for the donation of Polaroids; Juliána Chomová from Fat Cat Press for silkscreen prints; and MeetFactory, Tomáš Soldán, Jonáš Verešpej, and Ankali for their support.