Jan Kostohryz, Alice Nikitinová, Hana Puchová: Should I take my shoes off?

The exhibition Should I take my shoes off? at MeetFactory Gallery transforms its industrial space into an imaginary apartment unit and, through the works of Alice Nikitinová, Hana Puchová, and Jan Kostohryz, explores home as a mutable stage where the material inventory, spatial layout, and gestures of everyday objects create a familiar field of situations oscillating between shared closeness and retreat into solitude.

Each artwork assumes a dual role: it shapes the factual, material structure of the flat while simultaneously forming its “human” layer, where relational scenarios unfold—recognisable to anyone who has ever shared a kitchen table, savoured holiday quiet, or endured the chaos of moving. In their still lifes and situational scenes, the selected painters map—at a slow, voyeuristic tempo—shared human rituals of care, memory, and intimacy.

The exhibition thus seeks to present visitors with a space that feels deceptively familiar yet unexpectedly new, where nostalgia intertwines with contemporaneity, the ephemerality of time with a longing for permanence, and subtle references arise to the everyday humorous situations we have all experienced, or are currently experiencing, in our own dwellings.

 

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Jan Kostohryz (b. 1993) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he studied painting, figurative sculpture, and printmaking. In his figurative oil paintings and plaster reliefs he develops an unassuming poetics of everyday interiors and the banal moments of millennial life – from glimpses of shifting scenes within apartment interiors to holiday idleness – into which he almost imperceptibly introduces the disturbing element of insects as a banal yet existentially charged micro-threat. He works with the tension between the intimacy of personal space and its disruption, alternating painting with sculptural relief inflected by elements of the classical canon. He received the Kunstpreis der Leinemann-Stiftung for his diploma work (2018) and in 2021 was a finalist for the Critics’ Award for Young Painting (Cena kritiky za mladou malbu). Kostohryz teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague as an assistant professor in the Painting I studio led by Robert Šalanda.

Alice Nikitinová (b. 1979) is a painter of Czech-Ukrainian origin who, after attending an art secondary school in Kyiv, completed the painting studio led by Jiří Sopko at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. A precise observer, she depicts the poetics of banal objects and situations that unfold almost exclusively within the interior of her flat. She composes these still lifes – marked by a distinctive humour – into chromatically restrained fields, and alongside painting she occasionally works with spatial installation and illustration. In 2010 she was a finalist for the Jindřich Chalupecký Award, and she currently co-heads the Drawing Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague together with Matěj Smetana.

Hana Puchová (b. 1966) is a painter and occasional illustrator closely associated with the Ostrava art scene and the group “Přirození”. She graduated from Jiří Šalamoun’s Studio of Illustration and Graphics at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (1991–1997); after her studies she returned to her native city, where she has taught art education since 1997 and exhibits regularly. Her portraits of friends and still lifes from domestic interiors, rendered in a slow, layered hand, compose a personal yet humorous history of everyday rituals of care, memory, and intimacy. Together with theorist Jiří Ptáček, Puchová will lead the Painting I studio at the Faculty of Art, University of Ostrava.

 

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Jan Kostohryz, Alice Nikitinová, Hana Puchová: Should I take my shoes off?​
15. 8. – 5. 10. 2025
MeetFactory Gallery

Opening: 14. 8. 2025 | Free Entry 

Artists: Jan Kostohryz, Alice Nikitinová, Hana Puchová
Curator: Ján Gajdušek
Architecture: Savka Marenić
Graphic Design: Jan Matoušek
Production: Nikol Hoangová

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Curator's Text 
 

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Tickets: 

100 CZK at GoOut
50 CZK students, seniors, ZTP 
The ticket is valid for both exhibition spaces. Tickets can also be purchased at the door.

For group discounts (over 10 people), guided tours of exhibitions or press accreditation, please contact polla.stankovianska@meetfactory.cz  

>>> valid for MeetFactory Gallery and Kostka Gallery; available for purchase at the bar (cash and card payment possible)
>>> opening of exhibitions is free of charge

Opening hours of the MeetFactory Gallery and Kostka Gallery:
Mon–Sun 13:00–19:45 

Zeď Gallery is open on weekends (13:00-19:45), when admission is possible on the basis of a ticket to the other gallery spaces and during events taking place in the courtyard (summer cinema, concerts, accompanying events of the exhibition programme, etc.).