Silent Metamorphosis
Veolia Energie: Výstava současného umění v kancelářích
Praha, Ostrava · 2026-01-01 – 2026-06-30
Welcome to a unique fine art exhibition organized by Veolia Energie ČR, which this time is not taking place in a traditional gallery, but directly in the premises of our Ostrava and Prague offices.
About the art initiative
Artworks exhibited in common office areas are not merely an aesthetic enrichment of the modern work environment, but represent Veolia’s deeper commitment to employee care, the development of corporate culture, and social responsibility. Through the Artist’s Hero platform, Veolia brings contemporary art closer to its colleagues with the aim of creating an inspiring working environment that opens up new topics and perspectives, cultivates aesthetic sensibilities, and supports mental well-being. At the same time, through the rental of these works, we help artists communicate their perspective on important societal and personal themes, reach new audiences, and financially support the domestic art scene.
The exhibition titled Silent Metamorphosis, featuring 29 artworks by 7 Czech and Slovak artists, can be viewed in the Ostrava and Prague offices in the Legatica building from January 1 to June 30, 2026. You can admire the exhibited works in various common areas, including hallways, kitchenettes, and meeting rooms.
Odkaz na web společnosti Veolia Energie dedikovaný umělecké iniciativě.
Director Martin Brůha welcoming the audience on the occasion of the opening on March 10, 2026
Silent Metamorphosis: A Curatorial Text by Michal Stolárik
The joint exhibition of Czech and Slovak female and male artists entitled Silent Metamorphosis offers a unique perspective on the silent processes of transformation that constantly take place in all aspects of nature, humanity, and human perception. The exhibited works connect diverse visual approaches and ideological lines, bringing an exclusive overview of an active generation of both the youngest and established artists. Through the selection of works, we observe how various forms transform into new structures and create an image of our internal thought processes as well as the world around us.
The artists work with form, structure, and compositional rhythm as fundamental means of the visual metaphor of transformation—from microscopic cellular arrangements, through fragments of landscape and natural elements, to imaginative and fictitious environments or communities that change under the influence of time, energy, and movement. The common denominator of their practice is the updating of traditional media, experimentation with technique or narrative, through which we see how painting intertwines with drawing, abstraction with figure, reality with fiction, lyrical atmosphere with conceptual sophistication, and grand dynamic expressive gestures with precise details and tiny meditative systems.
The Silent Metamorphosis project provides a space for exploring the relationship between humans and nature, internal and external processes, and imagination. The organism, landscape, body, or gesture become units for observing transformation—whether as poetic records, micro- and macro-structures, or as metaphorical images of a pulsing metamorphosis that connect ecological sensitivity with visual energy and introspective depth. The exhibition thus presents original painterly worlds in which physical, mental, and ecological planes are inseparably interconnected.
Last but not least, it also opens up the theme of time as an active force of transformation. It recalls processes of growth, ripening, or waiting, in which change takes place beyond our perception. The works thus create a space for slowing down and attentively perceiving subtle shifts. Metamorphosis can be understood as a continuous state of being in which everything transforms and nothing lasts forever.
Exhibition curator Michal Stolárik introduces the individual artists
Exhibition participants
Michal Stolárik
exhibition curator
Michal Stolárik, born and based in Bratislava, Slovakia, is an independent curator, art critic, and advisor. He studied History of Visual Art at Comenius University in Bratislava, focusing primarily on contemporary art after 1989. He has collaborated with numerous galleries and institutions, including ASHES/ASHES in New York, Label201 in Rome, Museum Kampa in Prague, MAUVE in Vienna, Kunstverein in Eisenstadt, Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum in Bratislava, Zoya Museum, Ján Koniarek Gallery in Trnava, Kunsthalle Bratislava, DSC Gallery in Prague, Fait Gallery in Brno, Steinhauser Gallery in Bratislava, White & Weiss Gallery in Bratislava, Karpuchina Gallery in Prague, VUNU in Bratislava, Zahorian & Van Espen Gallery, and others. Stolárik's curatorial work encompasses a diverse range of exhibitions featuring both emerging and established artists, with a primary focus on creators from Central and Eastern Europe. He collaborates with private galleries, state institutions, and independent project spaces in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Italy, the USA, and Austria, engaging with a wide spectrum of media and themes related to expanded forms of reality. He has been collaborating with Artist's Hero since 2025.
Tomáš Absolon
visual artist, painter
Tomáš Absolon (*1987, Uherské Hradiště) lives and works in Prague. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he successively attended the studios of Jiří Petrbok, Jiří Černický, and Michael Rittstein. In 2016, he won second place in the Criticism Award for Young Painting. In his work, he has long been developing the visual possibilities of painting, treating the picture as an open space for abstract strategies, formal experiments, and the reduction of fragments from the real world. His works are characterized by striking colors, dynamic gestures, and compositional energy that evokes digital graphics, poster design, or gestural typography. Yet, they are always the result of a purely analog painting process—working with layers, color mixing, stencils, or dense strokes of the brush and oil pastels. Absolon's painterly signature is instantly recognizable. He combines organic imagination, a sense of rhythm, and color intensity with a precise, albeit intuitive gesture. His motifs stem from nature and its organic structures—from imaginary microscopic views into plant cells, to the rhythms and layers that naturally repeat in natural forms. Although his paintings appear abstract at first glance, they conceal visual echoes of the real world or fragments of popular culture.
Patrícia Koyšová
visual artist, painter
Patrícia Koyšová (*1985, Nové Zámky) lives and works in Bratislava. She is a graduate of Ivan Csudai's studio at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava and has long been an established artist on the Slovak art scene. In 2011, she was a finalist for the Strabag Art Award CEE and received the Rector's Award for her master's thesis. In her work, she constantly pushes the boundaries of the painting medium—experimenting, innovating, and searching for new ways to grasp the picture as a space for an intense visual and intellectual experience. Through abstract compositions, she creates imaginative situations in which she records unique moments using expressive and energetically charged gestures. Her works act as records of movement, swirling, and flow—whether they evoke natural elements, microorganisms, landscapes, celestial bodies, or imaginary calligraphy, they always open up a space for interpretation. Koyšová works primarily with acrylic and ink, with technological experimentation forming a crucial part of her artistic method. She paints "with air"—using the pressure of an air compressor, blow guns, airbrush, as well as unconventional tools such as squeegees or mops. Through these techniques, she creates the illusion of movement, depth, and material fiction, which transforms into a living visual organism within the paintings.
Patrik Kriššák
visual artist, painter
Patrik Kriššák (*1986, Kežmarok) lives and works in Prague. He studied at the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica and at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Ostrava under the guidance of Daniel Balabán. In 2011, he was a finalist for the STRABAG Art Award and the Start Point Prize; in 2012, a finalist for the Critique's Award for Young Painting; and in 2019, a finalist for the VÚB Painting of the Year. He works in thematic cycles in which he systematically explores the relationship between man and the environment, nature, and a world shaped by technological and civilizational development, while responding to current ecological, social, and existential issues. Although his approach is critical, he communicates primarily visually—through direct painterly experience. A significant line of his work consists of paintings inspired by underwater worlds, especially the coral reef ecosystem. Despite their strong ecological subtext, they feel optimistic and visually compelling. Kriššák's painterly language is close to abstract stylization and gestural painting, balancing control with the principles of chance. A characteristic feature of his work is his signature technique of applying paint directly from a glass container onto the canvas. This physical and time-consuming process emphasizes the materiality of the painting, the rhythm of layering, and the energy of the gesture. The result is paintings with striking colors and a rich surface structure that enhance the experience of the work and support the impression of an organic, constantly transforming visual environment.
Kanrec Sakul
visual artist, painter
Kanrec Sakul (*1989, Košice) is a unique phenomenon on the Czech-Slovak scene. Although self-taught in painting, he has dedicated himself to it for many years with extraordinary intensity and a strong overview of the most current trends. His work regularly appears in exhibitions and prestigious art fairs (Basel, Vienna, Budapest, Warsaw), where he is gradually building a prominent position as a distinct artist without local predecessors or followers. In his work, he focuses on detailed oil painting, obsessive drawing, as well as raw object-based realizations and installations. The artist's paintings are dominated by a clear interest in experiment, structures, and organic forms; he purposefully works with repetitiveness, geometric shapes, and a relative perspective that dissolves into striking and absurd color schemes. By varying and combining glaze and impasto areas, a Fauvist sensibility, and work with color, he builds microworlds dominated by architectural vistas with an unclear function, time, and place of existence. At first glance, his paintings appear abstract, but they soon reveal their own logic—soft, articulated, almost botanical objects exist in distinctive, emptied spaces that breathe life even without the presence of a figure. A clear interest in morphology influenced by biological elements is driven by visual automatism or associative painting, which are closely aligned with surrealist tendencies.
Jan Soumar
visual artist, painter
Jan Soumar (*1995, Prague) is a prominent representative of the young generation of Czech painters. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he attended the studios of Michael Rittstein and subsequently Josef Bolf. In 2019, he completed a study residency in Scotland (Robert Gordon University) and in 2020 in Taipei (Taipei National University of the Arts). He is a two-time finalist for the Critic's Prize for Young Painting, having won the Audience Award in the most recent edition. In his work, he explores the possibilities of depicting the figure in an unstable form and dynamic movement. Originally influenced by digital applications and the visual deconstruction of the image, he creates fragmentary records of bodies, which he breaks down into gestural strokes and full-color areas existing in both fictional interiors and natural exteriors. Soumar's works naturally oscillate between figurative and abstract painting, alternating between a relaxed expressive handwriting and realistic details. Through gestural calligraphic lines and the flow of colors, he suggests stylized figures anchored in an ephemeral moment of physical and mental transformation, while hinting at the blending of man with nature.
Helen Tóth
visual artist, painter
Helen Tóth (*1992, Dunajská Streda) lives and works in Bratislava. She is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, where she studied in the painting studios of Ivan Csudai, Daniel Fischer, Rastislav Podhorský, and Martin Špirc. She is a three-time finalist for the VÚB Painting Award (2017, 2022, 2023), was nominated for the Piero D’Amore e Colore Award (The Others, Turin, 2022), was longlisted for the STRABAG Art Award International 2022, and was selected for the Zlín Youth Salon 2024 and, in 2025, the prestigious Salon d’Automne in Paris. In her work, she has long focused on painting, drawing, and installations, through which she explores the forest as an autonomous visual language. For her, the motifs of branches and trees represent an inexhaustible visual resource that allows her to develop themes of ecology, the relationship between humans and nature, and inner transformation. Her works feature lyrical, atmospheric compositions based on the observation of natural structures, delicate lines, textures, and a muted color palette. The process of removal is also important to her, leaving traces of absence in the paintings—visual metaphors for the disappearance of forest ecosystems. Alongside painting, she creates small-scale installations and land-art interventions: she returns painted branches to the landscape and observes their new existence in the forest environment. It is in this gesture that she connects poetics with ecological sensitivity, viewing nature not only lyrically, but also critically.
Mária Trnková
visual artist, painter
Mária Trnková (*1992, Považská Bystrica) is a student in the painting studio of Rastislav Sedlačík at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, building upon her previous studies in architecture. Trnková focuses on the intersection of painting, drawing, and ceramic objects. In her work, she develops minimalist and visually economical compositions on the border between abstraction and concrete record of reality. She works with a muted, balanced color palette and drawing techniques that allow her to create works oscillating between a delicate emotional gesture and contemplative quietude. Her painterly compositions stem from the observation of natural formations, which she transforms into subtle lines, planes, and layers. The result is visual situations evoking flow, presence, and constant transformation, while simultaneously providing space for an introspective, almost meditative perception of detail. Trnková reduces nature to its fundamental shapes and simple structures, creating delicate poetic landscapes that feel almost like diary entries.
Artist's Hero
exhibition supplier
Artist's Hero is a visual art sharing platform that connects young visual artists with corporate art lovers through flexible art rentals and commissioned artwork. Artist's Hero's mission is to unlock the power of visual art in the modern work environment – positively influencing mental well-being, stimulating creativity, discussion and mutual sharing, while also sparking interest in contemporary art. At the same time, the platform helps organizations communicate their key themes, perspectives and values through artistic pop-up exhibitions and create a positive impact within corporate social responsibility and ESG activities. The vision of the platform's founder, Marek Jakúbek, is a world where young academic artists and their work are increasingly recognized by a wider audience. A world where a dialogue is created between the corporate and artistic spheres, and where private organizations financially and morally support artists who share common themes, perspectives and motivations. Marek Jakúbek, Founder & CEO
