Section

Grant Program

Classification

Archive

Curator

Jan Freiberg

Project

Galerie Na shledanou

Gallery Na shledanou (“The Good-bye Gallery”) is located in south Bohemian town of Volyně in the Malšička cemetery. It focuses on contemporary art with an emphasis on site specific art as well as the finality of human life. The curator and author of the concept is the art historian and photographer Jan Freiberg. Gallery Na shledanou was established as a branch of the City Museum in Volyně, and opened on 1 May 2010 with an exhibition of paintings by Ondřej Maleček.

The gallery building was intended to serve as a funeral hall. It was built as a so-called Zet Action in the late 1980s, but was never put into operation. A glass building with a high ceiling, after twenty years of dilapidation, the Gallery Na shledanou was established in 2010, with a program based on the idea that the fine arts correspond to the place or accentuate it. The aim is to bring high-quality Czech art to the Šumava region and to give the public a fresh view of contemporary art as a part of everyday life. The gallery publishes a newspaper devoted to the relationship between death, life and fine arts. It is trying to build a place in Volyně that it can speak through art to locals and guests from afar.

In the Gallery Na shledanou, artists generally address themes of architecture, space, or concepts that are very close to death, but this is not the rule. Exhibitions take the form of residencies, during which the artists work for several days on the walls of the gallery. Before the next arrival, the walls will be returned to white. This is a creative metaphor for life and death emphasizing an endless cycle, much like the place itself. For example, Josef Bolf, the Jindřich Chalupecký Award finalist, Tomáš Vaněk, the current Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, the photographer Jiří Thýn, the sculptor and perfomer Martin Zet, the painters Marie Blabolilová and Blanka Jakubčíková have all worked here.

In recent years, the Gallery has focused on ecological themes, and is also trying to point out the importance of death rituals for the health of society. At the same time, it seeks new ways of presentation, combining ecological art projects of real space with new works for virtual reality.