Creative Activities
Research
Lucia Scerankova: Soft Fortresses
Curator: Lucia L. Fišerová
Fiducia Gallery, Ostrava
Opening: 6 May 2025
exhibition will run until: 20 June 2025
Lucie Scerankova’s exhibition project Soft Fortresses is based on her doctoral research, in which she investigates the processes and mechanisms of embodiment and disembodiment in the photographic image. The author is particularly interested in the connection of the human body and mind with the non-human world, with which we naturally intermingle in the environment of the landscape and its elements. One of the most visually powerful natural elements with its unbridled energy is water, which is the central motif of the current exhibition. At the same time, water can also be seen as an effective metaphor for the photographic surface, which often functions as a permeable and fluid interface with its own specific dynamics.
A continuous part of the artist’s work is the exploration of the emotional resonance of the image in the context of the physical qualities of the material used. Here we find photography in its classical form, but also materialized – in the form of an object or dynamized in a moving image. The ephemeral component of the text enters the image in an attempt to merge with it, but also vice versa – the motif of the sea wave emerges from it and becomes independent in the form of a sagging fabric. Even a soft image can remain solid.
Initials – relationship between two letters
Krček Gallery May – September 2025
Posters by students of the Graphic Design and Digital Design Studio
works from the course Font and Typography
M. A. Lenka Baroňová
A pair of forces is the simultaneous action of two forces of equal magnitude in opposite directions acting at different points (on different vector lines) of a rigid body, i.e. they are two equally large forces of opposite direction that do not lie on the same line. (from a high school physics textbook)
Our project of pairs of letters differs from the physics of pairs of letters in that the forces of the individual letters do not act in opposition to each other. Rather, we were looking for the same force of action for both letters so that they merge into a sign with the same expressive elements. Similar to the way a logotype is created, we looked for shape variations in three possible access paths. We tried all the ways of forming the initials (the initial letters of the first and last names) to select the variant in which the mark “peeled off” the most.
We looked for the same shape system to combine two letters from existing classic fonts – serif and sans-serif – to create a ligature (slit). The second option was a handmade approach, using drawing, painting, calligraphy, lettering, stamping, frottage, carving or even embroidery. The third option we called experimental. In this group we could include the abstraction of letterforms at the limit of legibility, working with decorative fonts, deconstruction, letters photographed over a long period of time, etc.
In these ways, 16 posters of 70 by 100 cm format and 12 A5 formats were created in the form of books, folders and notebooks.
We have exhibited our typographic project in the Krček Gallery (connecting wing of the Cabinet of Theoretical Studies) and it will be on display until the end of September.
ATypI – International Typographic Conference in Copenhagen
mAI type – exhibition of posters by students of the Graphic Design Studio
A. Lenka Baroňová – management of typographic projects, organization of the exhibition
- MgA. Jakub Hrdina, Ph.D. – AI workshops, exhibition organization, author of exhibition work and website
Mgr. Helena Maňasová Hradská, Ph.D. – exhibition concept and curatorial
On April 22-26, we gratefully accepted the invitation to participate in the conference of the prestigious international conference ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale), which is a non-profit organization dedicated to typography and type design. The main activity of the association is the organisation of the conference, which is held in a different city of the world every year. This year, all the top lovers of type, books and graphic design were invited to the Danish capital. The conference was held under the auspices of the Royal Danish Academy at the Academy’s large and cosy campus. The works of our students, which have already been on display at the mAI type exhibition at the G18 Gallery from 12 December 2024 to 27 February 2025, were also exhibited here.
Our joint project was selected from 267 competing proposals for presentations, workshops and exhibitions in the call for proposals by the conference organiser, from which the expert jury selected 80 participants. We are proud that the work of our students and our pedagogical collaboration has come to fruition and the posters have been viewed by hundreds of experts from around the world.
The conference program included a number of inspiring talks on the history of type, famous personalities, current trends, font design, including philosophical questions about social context, new technologies, sustainability, artificial intelligence, etc.
We appreciate the success of our project on an international scale and thank all those who contributed in any way to the organization and realization of the exhibition, especially the students of the 2nd and 3rd year of the Graphic Design Studio, who with unusual inventiveness and imagination created over fifty posters in the Font and Typography course in classical professional software and experimentally using artificial intelligence.
Lenka Baroňová
ALCHEMY OF THINGS
thesis of the 2nd year of the Photography studio at FMK UTB
Petr Cileček, Adela Dršková, Philippe Hniliců, Šimon Mach, Olena Okuňkova, Simona Škamradová, Michaela Švábová, Eva Tesařová
Photogether Gallery, 28 – 31 January 2025
Lucia L. Fišerová, curator of the exhibition
Alchemy is a proto-scientific discipline combining the knowledge of natural sciences and magic. Its result should be a participation in the transformation and completion of natural processes. For the purpose of our project, we have adopted the term primarily as a metaphor for the transformation of the meaning of the concept of “object” into the concept of “thing”. Where is the point at which an anonymous prefabricated object made to fulfil a purpose becomes a thing with a soul and a story? Within the framework of the artistic research, the students attempted to work systematically with a selected object or group of objects, looking for an individual modus operandi, how to get under the skin of the object and reveal a certain type of silent life in it, how to emphasize its emanent “eternalness”. In some cases, a kind of portrait of the thing is created using forms of still life or even landscape. Another variant was working with the principle of collection, classification, categorization, typology, archive. Several artists have approached the subject by tracing the transformation of an object over time, its wear and decay. They used the form of time-lapse photography. Some students focused on the relationship of the object to its owner, or to the environment to which the object belongs or no longer belongs. And the images also record the change in the meaning of an object by recontextualising it. Through the things around us we can often see more clearly the hidden life in the context of time – its random traces changing into signs.
The Zbrojovka phenomenon: Better work, better life
Tens of thousands of photographs. Hundreds of thousands of employees. Countless stories. This is the Zbrojovka Phenomenon. From political meetings and May Day parades to company retreats and birthday parties. Official pictures for company newspapers and bulletin boards and fleeting snapshots taken for fun. This is the content of a period archive charting life and work at Zbrojovka by many photographers over more than three decades. The archive was found and rescued by photographer Roman Franc and a classmate. On its basis, the team of authors subsequently prepared the book Phenomenon Zbrojovka. The key to selecting the photographs was their timeless visual power and their ability to suggest hidden stories from the life of Zbrojovka, which together can bring us closer to its authentic image. TIC BRNO together with its partners Nová Zbrojovka and the Brno City Museum are behind the Zbrojovka Phenomenon. The project was created with the financial support of the Statutory City of Brno.
Lucia L. Fišerová
fenomenzbrojovka.cz
Lucia L. Fišerová: SENTENCES – BODIES – GARDENS
Wednesday, 22 January 2025 at 5 pm, lecture
Prague Castle, Supreme Purkrabstvi (entrance from the Golden Lane).
The lecture is an accompanying programme to the exhibition The Heart is a Temple (Kučerová – Pinkava – Komm). Imperial Stables, 5 November 2024 – 16 March 2024
“The human body can be defined as a territory of desire, a territory of pain or a container of memory. The sensual experience of the world through one’s own corporeality has inspired many artists to express messages that are often deeper than they might at first appear. Is it possible to use the image of the body to express human solitude, dreaming, contemplation, intimacy, animality, obsession, forgetting, disappearance, eternity…? And can the same be suggested by its absence? In what constellations can the body find itself in the labyrinth of the city, in the middle of a vast landscape or in the monotonous backdrop of simple things? The lecture is conceived as a non-committal walk through selected works of art across time and media. Through examples from photography, painting and spatial art, we will glimpse how surprising the connections between physical experience and transcendent experience can be.”
https://www.hrad.cz/…/vety-tela-zahrady-propojeni…
UNSEEN / UNFRAMED
Viktória Hegedűšová, Kristína Kiliková, Kristína Kordiaková, Dominika Krošláková, Emma Lukášová, Elizaveta Marchkova, Martin Matula, Sofie Michaela Mjartanová, Michal Paraska, Viktor Pľuchta, Lujza Prokopová, Mojmír Ševčík, Jan Vitha. Lucia L. Fišerová
Photogether Gallery, 23 – 27 January 2024
Things that are unseen at first sight, unframed, unseparated from the surrounding world. They are below the threshold of perceptibility or beyond the scope of classification – in the interval from the completely banal to the absurd or fanciful. It is necessary to realize again and again that the meanings of things do not lie in the breadth of the visual field but in the depth of seeing itself. To walk the old familiar paths, but with more and more open eyes.
Petra Bašnáková: Born of the Sand and Sun
31 January – 9 March 2024 Fiducia Gallery, Nádražní 30, Ostrava, Ostrava, curator of the exhibition.
Born of the Sand and Sun is an exhibition and book project by Petra Bašnáková, a student of the Photography Studio at the Faculty of Photography, University of Technology in Zlín. It brings an unusual insight into the life of the desert tribes of contemporary Israel – the nomadic Bedouins – in the context of Israeli-Palestinian coexistence. Instead of spectacular travel or reportage images, the student presents meditative landscape scenes, found still lifes and timeless portraits not unlike paintings. Their visual monumentality is thus in direct contrast to the ephemeral and changing nature of the desert environment and life in it. The strength and persuasiveness of Petra Bašnáková’s photography in such challenging conditions of a closed community lies in her natural communicativeness, empathy, interest in human stories, but also in her precise yet open vision of the image. The artist keeps enough distance from the subjects to capture the overall desert scenery. At the same time, however, she accentuates the centre of the image, which is at one moment a car wreck, at another an abandoned goat or a piece of colourful drapery fluttering in the wind. The nomadic inhabitants sit quite peacefully in the evening light, looking into the lens. The scenery, taking place in a completely indecisive moment, surprises with its sudden intimacy and universality at the same time.
Petra Bašnáková: Born Of The Sand And Sun.
Dewi Lewis Publishing. 2023, EAN: 9781911306986
selection of photographs and picture editing by Lucia L. Fišerová
Born of the Sand and Sun is an exhibition and book project by Petra Bašnáková, a student of the Photography Studio at the Faculty of Photography of the University of Technology in Zlín. It brings an unusual insight into the life of the desert tribes of contemporary Israel – the nomadic Bedouins – in the context of Israeli-Palestinian coexistence. Instead of spectacular travel or reportage images, the student presents meditative landscape scenes, found still lifes and timeless portraits not unlike paintings. Their visual monumentality is thus in direct contrast to the ephemeral and changing nature of the desert environment and life in it. The strength and persuasiveness of Petra Bašnáková’s photography in such challenging conditions of a closed community lies in her natural communicativeness, empathy, interest in human stories, but also in her precise yet open vision of the image. The artist keeps a sufficient distance from her subjects to capture the overall desert scenery. At the same time, however, she accentuates the centre of the image, which is at one moment a car wreck, at another an abandoned goat or a piece of colourful drapery fluttering in the wind. The nomadic inhabitants are sitting quite peacefully in the evening light, looking into the lens. The scenery taking place in a completely indecisive moment surprises with its sudden intimacy and universality at the same time.
The book was christened on February 15, 2024 at 6 pm at Josef Sudek’s Atelier gallery.
HOMO PHOTOGRAPHICUS
Patrik Fica, Pavel Hála, Kristína Kordiaková, Kateřina Lebedová, Martin Matula, Simona Škamradová
9 May – 7 June 2024 Gallery Díra, Ostrava https://arf.works/vystavy/homo-photographicus/
Curators.
The exhibition of six students of the Photography Studio of the Tomas Bata University in Zlín brings a reflection of two semester themes Homo Photographicus and Unframed/Unseen, thought
and elaborated during the last year under the guidance of Silvia Saparová and Lucie L. Fišerová.
The former reflects our transformation from homo sapiens to homo photographicus, as described by the Spanish artist and curator Joan Fontcuberta. In the contemporary world, the human being who photographs and is photographed is almost defined by the act of taking photographs. The constant pressing of the “shutter” on the screen of a smartphone has become a form of active and full experience of life with its significant and quite banal moments. When a moment does not emerge in the form of an image, the memory of it fades from personal and collective consciousness. When we are not captured and exposed on social media, it is as if we are not even there. On the other hand, photography, devalued by digital overproduction, gradually loses its physical exclusivity and content value What is the point of recording ordinary situations and making images out of them? The second theme offers a partial solution. It shifts the focus from a philosophical reflection on the medium to a more conscious experience of the present moment. By sharpening the senses and ritualizing the everyday, scenes and situations are gradually revealed that are at first sight unseen, unframed, unseparated from the surrounding world. They are below the threshold of perceptibility or beyond the scope of classification – in the interval from the completely banal to the absurd or fanciful. It is necessary to realize again and again that the meanings of things do not lie in the breadth of the visual field, but in the depth of seeing itself. To walk the old familiar paths, but with more and more open eyes.
Nouns
exhibition of students of the Photography Studio of the Faculty of Photography of the University of Technology in Zlín
Petra Karamanová, Kristína Kiliková, Peter Polanský
Off Bratislava photography festival
8 – 24 November 2024, in the Prior department store on Kamenné náměstí.
Lucia L. Fišerová, Silvia Saparová
What is essential in naming the inner features of our personality? Where does the safe space of our individuality begin and end? What trace do we leave by passing through time? Where does the boundary between authentic being and self-presentation lie? Can we identify something immutable in ourselves, or are we just a wardrobe of identities and roles? What degree of inner revelation is possible to keep us from becoming vulnerable? Is being in a crowd a hiding place or does it lead to depersonalization and dissolution of the self? The Nouns exhibition reveals the complexity and vastness of the psychological processes of the constitution of the self. In the series Echoes, Petra Karamanová focuses on the motif of the head, but in a place where “there is no face”. By deliberately omitting the identification surface, she directs attention to imaginary paths through the thicket of our imaginations that lead to the interior of the mind, to ourselves. Kristýna Kiliková’s photographic series Fractus is conceived as a metaphorical mirror of the artist’s inner fractality. Based on the principle of found fractals, she mirrors her own fragmentation, which, however, through self-transformation grows into meaningfully structured patterns. In his project Eliminating the Possibility of Vulnerability, Peter Polansky attempts a visual analysis of the defence mechanism he has created against others. Based on an examination of his own face in relation to the Other, he has created a functional model of opening and closing in which he works with different technologies and photographic error.
Marcela Očenášová: Sitting with Someone
24 October – 4 December 2023, Fiducia Gallery, Nádražní 30, Ostrava
Curator of the exhibition.
To admit the darkness, to unwrap the pain, to peer into it and see through it. Marcela Očenášová’s series of photographs visualizes her inner process of coming to terms with existential uncertainty. This condition, rooted in a personal fear of death and doubts about the afterlife, dissolves in her paintings by tirelessly peering into such depths where the true must already be beautiful. The exhibition is a fusion of three photographic projects, Sitting with Someone (2021), Shinigami (2023) and Lumos (2023). All three parts of the project stand in a kind of opposition to each other and at the same time in a fruitful paradox. They reveal the unconscious and the dark side of the psyche – melancholy, helplessness and apathy. At this point they smoothly transition into acceptance, reconciliation and hope. In the moment of hope comes the realization of ephemerality, absence, and longing. And the whole process begins anew. Marcela Očenášová thus seems to encompass the whole reality in its extreme positions. She is aware of the clear in herself, but she does not even carve out the difficult – that which costs her most of her strength. In this way she gives a comprehensive picture, both of the amplitudes of her soul and of the principle of the world: It is meaningful with everything that is in it. Otherwise, it would have no meaning.
Twelve eyes
Exhibitor: Petra Bašnáková, Eliška Blažková, Viola Hubáčková, Debora Loučková, Adam Kencki, David Mackovič
13. 12. 2023 – 10. 1. 2024
Photogether Gallery, Tř. T. Bati 3705, 760 01 Zlín
https://arf.works/vystavy/dvanactero-oci/
Curator.
The exhibition Twelve Eyes presented the works of students and graduates of the Photography Studio of the Faculty of Photography of the University of Technology in Zlín, created during their study stay at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem in 2011-2023. The photographs reflect a subjective view of the exotic country in which their authors spent one or more semesters. The range of chosen themes, genres and authorial approaches is wide. The exhibition was conceived as a visual summa – a view through one eye, twelve eyes at once. It is made up of individual pieces: fixed concepts of artist ensembles created over a twelve-year period have been loosened and disconnected to intuitively connect with each other and assemble into new visual wholes. A shared vision, a sensing of related motifs, a desire to know and absorb this land and to retell it in the light of one’s own experiences, as if with one voice, runs through the exhibition’s organism. The need to distil beauty in its most elemental form.
Silvia Saparová: INSTANT PRESENCE
Sýpka Gallery, Valašské Meziříčí, 29 November 2023 – 4 February 2024
Lucia L. Fišerová, curator of the exhibition
Silvia Saparová is a photographer of many original positions. She gradually transforms her natural relationship to imagination and staging, enriched in parallel by a sensitive linking of reality and illusion, into an interest in purely intuitive mapping of the essential. Her latest project, Instant Presence (2023), is therefore the logical outcome of this inner movement from the actual to the timeless and from the representational to the suggestive. Here the artist capitalizes on her interest in photographic experimentation and the (often subversive) self-reflection of the photographic medium. Using an Instax camera, she elastically combines her interest in the female body and face as sites of introspection with the spaces and objects of the overlooked everyday. By further enlarging the resulting photographs, she strips away the typical visuality dependent on the plastic medium, suddenly revealing the nuances and very essence of the instant material. Often hovering on the border of the identifiable, the images are thus able to convey urgent messages about ourselves through their silence – “revealing time as duration, but also as the immediate apprehension of the past and its subsequent anticipation in the instantaneous present”.
HAPPY STESS.
Matej Chrenka, Lenka Lučenič / Nikola Machačová, David Mackovič, Kateřina Měšt’anková, Marcela Očenášová, Peter Pikulík, Lukáš Procházka, Anna Poubová, Matěj Skalický, Eliška Sky / Katarína Tamová, Nikola Tláskalová
Lucia L. Fišerová, curator
The exhibition took place as part of the main programme of the Month of Photography festival in Bratislava, 4 November – 30 November 2022 at Open Gallery, Baštová 5. https://arf.works/vystavy/2022-stastny-stesk/
Longing understood as an indistinct chord, sounding from behind the image rather than derived from a specific scene in it – was an intuitive key in the selection of photographic files for the exhibition of the graduates of the Zlín studio. The photographic works have been created over the decades on various themes, but the social climate of the last few years has slowly created a new possible framework for reading them. The borderline feelings of isolation, loneliness, emptiness, absence of meaning, awareness of the relativity of previous certainties, the temporariness of things, events, relationships, health and life itself have at the same time led us to the need for inner reconciliation and acceptance of the inevitable. We were called to find again within ourselves the source of peace and to define it. To try again to seek beauty and reflect the deeper nature of the world. To detach ourselves from the ephemeral, even futile, everyday, while remaining awake in the present moment. To escape more often from the tiresome media flow of information, images and commodities to silence, to visual emptying and contemplation.
BELONG TO THE WORLD
Opening 20 February 2025 House of Art | Opava | curator.
A large-scale exhibition organized by our faculty in the premises of the House of Arts in Opava. All the interiors of the two-storey building are available, including the massive St. Wenceslas Church and the adjacent oratory. Three foreign artists associated with FMK are presented. Aliaksandra Laurová, a graduate of the doctoral studies in digital design at FMK UTB, a regular participant in Panta Rhei symposia, Ute Deutz from Berlin, and Julia Marchlewska, a young Polish painter from the cooperating Academy of Arts in Gdańsk. Vladimír Kovařík, the head of the Product Design Studio at the Faculty of Fine Arts, UTB, was given the most space in the consecrated Gothic church of St. Wenceslas. The curator is a staff member of the Cabinet of Theoretical Studies of FMK doc. Miroslav Zelinský.
Digital prints by Aliaksandra Laurová, small objects by Ute Deutz, large-scale paintings by Julia Marchlewska and objects, graphic sheets and installations by Vladimír Kovařík will be presented.
The opening is scheduled for February 20, 2025 at 5pm.
DESIGN VALUE CALCULATOR
Seminar Enhancing Decision-Making with Game Data and System Dynamics
Seminar organized by the System Dynamics Society/seminar led by Eva Šviráková22 January 2025
NOUNS
Prior department store on Kamennom námestí Bratislava/8 – 24 November 2024
We cordially invite you to the opening of the exhibition of the students of the Photography Studio of the Faculty of Photography of the University of Technology in Zlín Petra Karamanova, Kristina Kilikova and Petr Polanský NOUNS on 8/11/2024 at 18:00. Curators of the exhibition are Lucia L. Fišerová and Silvia Saparová.
The exhibition will take place as part of the Off Bratislava photography festival, 8-24 November 2024, in the Prior department store on Kamenné námestí.
Project Management Conference: I am vs AI
May 2024 | Zlín | Educational Complex U18
The Project Management Conference is a professional event regularly attended by project managers, scrum masters, product developers and other professionals and enthusiasts across all disciplines. In addition to excellent keynotes and hands-on workshops, the large-scale social evening is unique, providing many networking opportunities as well as a full-day Open Space. The organisation and programme is the responsibility of the stable team of Eva Šviráková (FMK UTB) and Jan Doležal (PM Consulting), who have organised all editions of the conference.
NAKI II Designers in the Czech Lands and the Czechoslovak Machinery Industry (2018–2022)
prof. PhDr. Zdeno Kolesár, Ph.D, Mgr. Vít Jakubíček, Ph.D. MgA. Martin Čada, Mgr. Zuzana Ragulová
Gestures of power as a part of multimedia communications and a tool of persuasion (2020–2021)
Mgr. Helena Maňasová Hradská, Ph.D., doc. Miroslav Zelinský, doc. Jana Horáková, Mgr. Lukáš Gregor, PhD., MgA. Le Trieu Hoang Ahn, MgA. Andreas Gajdošík
Visualization of Big Data as a Challenge to Aesthetics. (2020-2021)
doc. PhDr. Miroslav Zelinský, CSc, Dr. Ing. Radek Stoček (Center of Polymer Systems), MgA. Aliaksandra Laurova
TAČR ÉTA A Managerial Model of Design Value for Competitiveness of SME in the Czech Republic (2019–2020)
Ing. Eva Šviráková, Ph.D., Mgr. Jan Kramoliš Ph.D
Books
- Jakubíček, Vít, Kolesár, Zdeno: Rozum versus cit : zlínský průmyslový design 1918–1958. Univerzita Tomáše Bati, Fakulta multimediálních komunikací, Zlín 2019. ISBN 9788074548611
- Gartnerová, Eva , Maňasová Hradská, Helena , Zelinský, Miroslav, Jakubíček, Vít, Valentová, Petra, Veselá, Romana: Nenávratné stopy : tradice a udržitelnost jako roční téma galerie G18 = Irreversible traces : tradition and sustainability as the annual theme of the G18 Gallery. Univerzita Tomáše Bati, Fakulta multimediálních komunikací, Zlín 2019. ISBN 9788074548703
- Kolesár, Zdeno, Jakubíček, Vít, Dubovský, Petr, Stanická, Silvie: Design ve službách trvale udržitelného rozvoje. Univerzita Tomáše Bati, Fakulta multimediálních komunikací, Zlín 2017. ISBN 9788074546471
U3A Courses of calligraphy by Lenka Baroňová
