At Independent Art Fair 2026 in New York, Prague-based gallery Hunt Kastner debuts with a duo presentation of Czech artists Jaromír Novotný and Jiří Thýn.
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For its debut at Independent Art Fair 2026, Prague-based gallery Hunt Kastner presents a duo exhibition of new paintings by Jaromír Novotný and photography-based works by Jiří Thýn. Working across painting, photography, and installation, both artists foreground material presence and the act of making within an increasingly digital, dematerialized visual culture.
Novotný approaches painting as a process of construction and disruption, where surface, structure, and material remain in active tension. Thýn expands photography through gesture, intervention, and installation, treating the image as fluid and continually recontextualized. In both practices, meaning is not fixed but emerges through process—less in representation than in its unfolding. The works develop through a continual exchange that calls for sustained attention, inviting the viewer to actively engage in their formation.
Jaromír Novotný (born 1974, Český Brod) approaches painting as a process of material and conceptual inquiry rather than image-making. Working across acrylic, graphite, ink, paper, organza, and canvas, he deconstructs the conventions of painting, foregrounding material, structure, and technique.
His works often incorporate stitching, inserted elements, and subtle ruptures, treating the canvas as a spatial, almost sculptural field in which surface, support, and transparency are equally active.
In his recent small-format series, traces of the concrete persist—glass beads, metal wires, fragments of text—hovering between visibility and dissolution. Meaning emerges through their shifting positions within the work, resisting fixed form and emphasizing process over representation.
Novotný studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague under Jitka Svobodová and Miloš Šejn. His work has been exhibited widely, including at Galerie Rudolfinum (Prague), Kolumba (Cologne), PLATO (Ostrava), and Gdansk City Gallery. He lives and works in Břežany, Czech Republic, and will be in residence at Dartmouth College this fall.
Jiří Thýn (born 1977, Prague) works with photography as an expanded field, extending it into installation and object-based interventions. His practice combines a subjective reflection of contemporary reality with a sustained interest in visual language and its role in communication.
Moving between global visual codes and the “untranslatability” of local contexts, he treats the photographic image with a painterly attention to form while using installation to shape its emotional impact.
In recent work, he shifts toward immediacy and gesture, using digital tools against their intended function to introduce chance, disruption, and affect. His process—combining found and original material—creates an ongoing dialogue between image and its recontextualization.
Thýn studied at UMPRUM and the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. He has led studios at FAMU and UJEP and currently heads Studio of Fine Arts IV at UMPRUM. His work has been exhibited at institutions including Manifesta 11, the Photographer’s Gallery (London), MoCP (Chicago), and Galerie Rudolfinum (Prague). His monograph From Now On Everything Will Be Beautiful was published in 2023. He lives and works in Prague.
