Berlin Art Week: Video Art from the Kunsthalle Praha Collection
Restless Identities: Contemporary Czech Video Art from the Kunsthalle Praha Collection
HALLEN06, Berlin Art Week 2025
6–14 September 2025
Wilhelm Hallen, Kopenhagener Straße 60-68
Curator: Barbora Ropkova
Kunsthalle Praha is a vibrant space for modern and contemporary art in the heart of Prague. Since its opening in 2022, it has hosted a dynamic programme of exhibitions, cultural events, and educational activities, connecting Czech and international artists and audiences. At the same time, Kunsthalle is building its own art collection, tracing key movements and moments in twentieth- and twenty-first-century art. The Kunsthalle Praha collection is a living, evolving body of over 2,000 artworks across a wide range of media. Although the collection is not on permanent display, the works regularly feature in exhibitions and are accessible online.
The four video works selected from Kunsthalle Praha’s collection and presented at Wilhelm Hallen offer a glimpse into the richness and diversity of the contemporary Czech art scene. Featuring both established and emerging artists, the selection highlights varied approaches to the moving image within distinctive artistic practices. A shared thread across the works is the exploration of human identity, viewed through different lenses and temporal layers. Zbyněk Baladrán investigates identity through the archaeology of historical memory, while Ján Mančuška delves into the tension between reality and staging. In contrast, the more imaginative videos by Markéta Magidová and Mark Ther explore themes of gender and social identity.
ARTWORKS
Zbyněk Baladrán (b. 1973)
Act of Repeating, 2005
SD video, 4:14 min
edition of 1/3 + 1 A.P.
Kunsthalle Praha, © Zbyněk Baladrán
The Act of Repeating belongs to Zbyněk Baladrán’s early work, where he mainly used private, artistic, and cultural archives. His primarily rational or even scientific approach examines identity through the lens of historical memory and reveals his personal and emotional relation to the depicted motifs.
Zbyněk Baladrán (b. 1973) focuses on social relations, manipulative marketing techniques and their relationship to art, the contradictions of the contemporary world, and the legacy of the interwar avant-garde. He also explores questions related to socialist history, as well as the consequences of society’s leap into neoliberal capitalism and the relationship between art and society.
Markéta Magidová (b. 1984)
Infamia, 2023
3D CGI animation, 10:35 min
edition of 1/5
Kunsthalle Praha, © Markéta Magidová
The visuality of Infamia was inspired by the sculptures and mosaics from ancient Pompeii, as well as inscriptions written by men in a local brothel. By telling the love story between a Pompeii gladiator and a sex worker, Magidová focuses on the theme of understanding others, as well as social constructs.
Markéta Magidová (b. 1984) is a Czech visual artist and director working mainly with animated shorts, sculptures, and digital paintings in the liminal space between the physical and the virtual. She investigates human imagination through the lens of others, and coded representations from art history. Her themes include childhood imagination, gender, social norms, and the interplay between mythology and contemporary life. Her films, digital images, and sculptures create immersive worlds and reflective spaces.
Ján Mančuška (1972–2011)
Double (From True Story Series), 2009
video, sound, 3:48 min
edition of 1/5 + 2 AP
Kunsthalle Praha, Courtesy Ján Mančuška Estate; Hunt Kastner, Prague; Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York; Meyer Riegger Berlin/Karlsruhe, © Ján Mančuška Estate, 2009
Double is based on an absurd, Kafkaesque plot, conceived as a parallel existence of the ‘real’ document and a staged monologue. Both layers are ambiguous – the documentary image inverts and becomes more staged than the actor’s speech, and vice versa. The schizophrenic doubling, like the story itself, intentionally avoids providing any final resolution.
Ján Mančuška (b. 1972, Bratislava – d. 2011, Prague) was a Czech conceptual artist of Slovak origin, known for his exploration of social reality through various media including moving images, installations, objects, and performance. His work often incorporated everyday objects to reflect critically on social issues while engaging with language, architecture, design, and lifestyle.
Mark Ther (b. 1977)
Villa?, 2011
film, 12:05 min
edition of 1/3
Kunsthalle Praha, © Mark Ther
