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Wednesday, October 21, 2026 |
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| Igor Hosnedl returns to London with unsettling, metaphysical works |
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Igor Hosnedl, Untitled, 2021. Ink on paper. Framed, 54.5 x 43.5 cm. 21.46 x 17.13 in.
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LONDON.- PM/AM presents Exhibition 68, a solo presentation by Czech artist Igor Hosnedl (b. 1988, Uherské Hraditě; based in Berlin). The exhibition brings together a selection of works on paper made around 2021 with paintings from the same period and more recent works, offering a view across different moments of the artists practice. Exhibition 68 marks Hosnedls return to PM/AM following Exhibition 10.
The drawings on view date from the same period as Rapunzel, Hosnedls 2021 solo exhibition at hunt kastner in Prague. Taking the Brothers Grimm tale as its starting point, the exhibition approached the story not as an illustration but as a way of exploring ambiguity that runs through the artists work: childlike naiveté alongside a sense of dread, stories that resist clear resolution. When critic Eva Skopalová wrote about the series, she identified the logic in ornament itself: hair, line and narrative intertwine, looping back rather than progressing in a single direction. This idea offers a useful entry point into the drawing on view: precise in touch but remains deliberately open in meaning.
Each work is considered as still lifes, though not in a fixed or traditional sense. Instead, they resemble an abandoned stage, suspended between something that has just happened and something yet to come. Mechanical fragments, animal bodies, vessels, fragments of landscape and human figures gather in an ambiguous, unsettling quietness. It occupies a space that Hosnedl describes as slow time, registered in the cast shadows and empty corners of the room. A recurring curtain introduces a sense of threshold. Figures positioned as if they were uncertain guardians of what lies beyond: a landscape that has not yet taken its final form. Running through the series, there is a preoccupation about the bodys vulnerability as clothing, gestures and social roles are portrayed as forms of protection. When those elements fall away, fragility comes into view, alongside something less expected: a sense of resolve.
Working at a small scale with a clear affinity for automatic drawing, Hosnedl develops these compositions through a process of reduction and stylisation. Totemic figures, objects and fragments of landscape are distilled into a precise graphic vocabulary and placed within theatrical, symbolically charged spaces. His works recall the stage-like quality of Metaphysical painting, while also drawn to a visual language shaped by graphic design and digital gaming imagery. This same linear foundation is carried into the monumental scale paintings. The hard outlines and darker tones contribute to Hosnedls Surrealist and Pittura Metafisica aesthetic, creating a visual language that remains open and unrestricted. Through the use of symbolic composition, the artist allows elements of the subconscious to emerge, leaving their meaning deliberately ambiguous and open to interpretation by the viewer.
The paintings in the exhibition come from two distinct periods, yet a continuous thread connects them to the drawings. In Divers Break, the figure suspended between water and land undresses in a single, uninterrupted gesture, bringing the drawings preoccupation with direct exposure. In Wolf Mother, the enclosed spaces of the still lifes become fully immersive by giving the animal motif a heavier, almost archetypal presence, poised between tenderness and threat. Hosnedl has spoken of his affinity with Czech Symbolism, particularly with Jan Preislers Black Lake, where the landscape becomes less of a physical place than a psychological state and the human presence appears not as a master of the scene but as a temporary and vulnerable body. That sensibility between the human and its surroundings runs through the exhibition as a whole.
Hosnedls paintings are built from handmade pigments, ground and mixed by the artist and applied with glue and damar varnish. The technique gives the surfaces a particular density and sheen, recalling the material presence of old master still lifes or icon painting rather than conventional contemporary art practice. The works on paper are executed in ink measuring 54.5 × 43.5 cm, a scale that allows the linear quality of the drawings to remain immediate, while the paintings extend into larger proportions for a more immersive space. PMAM_Exhibition 68 Igor Hosnedl
Igor Hosnedl studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (20072013), in the Drawing Studio of Professor Jitka Svobodová, and graduated from the studio of Vladimír Skrepl and Jiří Kovanda. He has been represented by Galerie EIGEN+ART since 2019 and by hunt kastner, Prague. In 2020, he was awarded a residency at The Fores Project, London. Recent solo exhibitions include Milky Way, Galerie EIGEN+ART, Leipzig (2026); Night Tide, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2025); DIVE, Galerie EIGEN+ART, Berlin (2024); Belladonna Harvest, Kunsthalle Bratislava (2023); Born in a Blue Body, Galerie EIGEN+ART, Leipzig (2023); and Rapunzel, hunt kastner, Prague (2021). His work was recently included in Memory of Touch at Kunsthalle Praha (2026), and has also been shown at Ribot Gallery, Milan; Downs & Ross, New York; Horizont Galéria, Budapest; FAIT Gallery, Brno; and X Museum, Beijing, among others.
This is Hosnedls second exhibition with PM/AM, following Exhibition 10.
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