The College of Graphic Arts and the Secondary School of Graphic Arts in Prague, collectively known as Hellichovka, have ranked among the Czech Republic’s leading schools of applied arts for more than a century. Since their founding in 1920, they have educated generations of prominent figures in Czech photography, graphic design, and the printing arts. Their teaching combines traditional craft techniques with contemporary technologies, emphasizing the development of an individual artistic approach, experimentation, and interdisciplinary collaboration. It is within this environment that the works presented in the exhibition Tabula Rasa were created.
Tabula Rasa
The title Tabula Rasa refers to a blank slate—not as a symbol of emptiness, but as a space gradually inscribed with experiences, doubts, and discoveries. Each image on view represents a fragment of a larger artistic project and captures a moment in the formation of a distinctive visual language.
The exhibition presents the broad range of approaches available within contemporary photography. Carefully constructed still lifes and experimental installations stand alongside documentary series exploring the environment of a psychiatric hospital, contemporary tramping culture, and transformations of the urban landscape. Analog and digital photography intersect freely, while intimate reflections on family memory, nostalgia, and a sense of place appear alongside works that employ photography as an object, a performance, or a vehicle for imagination.
Info
Curator | Tereza Watkins
Dates | 1–11 October 2026
Opening | 3 October 2026, 15:00
Venue | Holešovická tržnice, Tržní náměstí
Address | Bubenské nábř. 306, 170 00 Prague 7–Holešovice
Infrastructures of Imagination
The exhibition explores how mythical and ritual narratives are reconfigured within an environment of data abstraction, distributed knowledge, and the aesthetic protocols of the present, and how digital culture shapes new forms of storytelling.
Michal Kalhous – Goosefoot and Raspberries, The Road to Victory
The exhibition *Goosefoot and Raspberries, The Road to Victory* presents a series of photographs created over the recent period. It is an experimental tool of synthesis and a search for a path to fulfillment. At the same time, it is a purposeful, captivating exploration of suddenness and their relationships. *Goosefoot and Raspberries, The Road to Victory* is once again an attempt at a dialogue between inner experience and a higher, transcendent order.
FOTOGRAF Josef Sudek
The legendary Josef Sudek (1896–1976) is now regarded as one of the great figures of world photography. After his death, a substantial part of his artistic estate was donated by his sister Božena to the collections of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague. It comprises approximately 21,000 original prints and around 27,000 negatives.