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Sculpture Park and Contemporary Art at Bechyně Castle 2026

The exhibition brings together contemporary artists from several generations and diverse artistic backgrounds. Their works interact with the historic setting of Bechyně Castle, its sculpture park with aviaries, and the late Gothic granary, responding to the site’s unique genius loci. Through installations, spatial interventions, and conceptual works, the artists engage with architecture, landscape, and history.

A key component of the project is the Stava Family Collection, presented in connection with the newly published catalogue The Stava Family Collection – Part I. This catalogue documents the entire collection of 20th-century abstract and non-objective art, along with selected ceramics. Previous exhibitions at Bechyně Castle have already presented major parts of the collection in the projects Avantgarde (2024) and Humanity (2025).

For the exhibition Relational Fields, participating artists have selected works from the Stava Family Collection to accompany their own contributions. Their choices reflect artistic influences, personal affinities, stylistic predecessors, and works that resonate with their practice. In this way, the exhibition creates a multi-generational dialogue between contemporary artistic approaches and key works of 20th-century art.

The exhibition is conceived as a dialogue across traditions, generations, environments, and perspectives. It links contemporary artistic practice with historical architecture, nature, and the legacy of modern art, revealing connections that extend across time and artistic lineages while remaining deeply rooted in the specific context of Bechyně Castle.
The exhibition Relational Fields consists of three interconnected parts:

Nives Widauer and Roland Kuit
Site-specific works and installations created by these two international contemporary artists invited by curators Claudia Rajlich and Nicole Stava. Their works engage with the interiors of Bechyně Castle, the sculpture park, and the Gothic granary.

Galerie Konrad Fischer (Düsseldorf / Berlin)
A selection of works by artists represented by the gallery, presented in the sculpture park and the historic granary.

Etcetera Collection (Prague)
Works by Czech artists from the collection, shown in a dedicated section of the Gothic granary.

For Relational Fields, participating artists have chosen works from the Stava Family Collection about which they delivered personal statements in form of texts, which will be presented in the castle granary. Their selections highlight artistic influences, shared sensibilities, and historical references that connect with their practice. Through these pairings, the exhibition creates a dialogue between contemporary perspectives and significant works of 20th-century art across generations.

Artists
Invited Artists
Nives Widauer (1965)
Roland E. Kuit (1959)

Galerie Konrad Fischer (Düsseldorf / Berlin)
Alice Channer (1977)
Daniel Buren (1938)
Candida Höfer (1944)
Zon Ito (1971)
Harald Klingenhöller (1954)
Sol LeWitt (1928–2007)
Thomas Schütte (1954)
Yuji Takeoka (1946)
Paloma Varga Weisz (1966)

Etcetera Collection
Dalibor Chatrný (1927–2013)
Milena Dopitová (1963)
Margita Titlová Ylovsky (1957)
Tomáš Ruller (1957)

Through this layered curatorial approach, the exhibition creates a dialogue between artistic generations, historical periods, and environments within the distinctive setting of Bechyně Castle.

A study of the spatial complexity. In addition to the spatial stacking of frequencies, their movement also plays a role. Sometimes the sound is a static distribution. At other times sonically as a pseudo-chaotic movement, in which a loudspeaker box can serve as an autonomous sound object, or as an integral part of the whole. The listener can take a seat or move through the room, constantly receiving different reflective angles of incidence on the ear.

It is a cycle for interpreting our increasingly complex world of information. Many facets are emphasized: Collisions, dialogues, interplay, patterns, propagation, fusion….
Sometimes the noise is even detached, spread out in pulses on the twelve-metre-wide horizontal panorama. Each pulse shifts in space as an audio object. This installation is one of the results of Roland Kuit's research into the phenomenon of noise with Symbolic Sound's Kyma system over the past 5 years. More about this award and the Matthijs Vermeulen Award 2025 at the end of May.

See news on the eight nerve here.

Until it is demolished, or even set on fire. Produced by Roland Kuit
Concertzender

Massa (Mass)
Where six thousand table tennis balls form a social media landscape and emit pulse sounds as mass communication. From taps to noise-like sounds. They complete courses in the terrain covered with balls.

Reflecties met tekstloos papier
(Reflections with textless paper)
Does the expressiveness of paper disappear if people no longer read? A question to which Roland Kuit answers in this installation of paper in which crumpling, tearing, folding, cramming and shredding reflects through the space like language.

Nonversatie (Nonversation)
Two video screens, each with an alphabetical circle. The circles are traversed with so-called Brownian Walks. This is a way to randomly go through the letters. The letters are named on one side by Roland Kuit and on the other side by artist Karin Schomaker. In these circles the trajectories of randomness can be followed. It is a process of discovering coincidental synchronicity. There lies the meaning found.

Private Kitchen