CV
Martin Zverina
https://www.martinzverina.com/
RESIDENCIES:
2026 - Scheria Space, Corfu, Greece
2025 - the Egon Schiele Art Centre, Český Krumlov, CZ
2025 - Czech Centre Brussels, Belgium
2021 - Galerie XY, Olomouc, CZ
2016 - TLTRPreß, Berlin, Germany
2015 - Creart Salzamt, Linz, Austria
SOLO AND TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS:
2026 - Scheria space, Corfu, Greece
2024 - Winks, Koh-i-noor, Prague
2022 - Drawings, Galerie Ponava, Brno
2018 - Solo on flute, Embassy of the Czech Republic in Helsinki
2018 - Scifi Alibi, Favu Gallery, with Laura Trencanska, Brno
2017 - Sauerkraut & Axe, City Surfer gallery, with Alexander Martsynyuk, Prague
2017 - Fan, Hunt Kastner gallery, with Anna Ročňová, Prague
2017 - Freshly Squeezed, DUB gallery, Pardubice
2015 - VOICEOVER, City Surfer gallery, with Tomas Suchanek, Prague
2015 - What are you afraid of, you know all of them anyway, Bunka gallery, Usti nad labem
2015 - Thawing Lake, etc. gallery, Prague
2015 - Delta , Cultural center CESTA, Tabor
2015 - Recognized view, Mezera gallery, Ostrava
2014 - Swatches, MakeMake gallery, Brno
2014 - Holandgoliat, INNER DARK gallery, with Katerina Ralisova, Pardubice
2013 - Space, bend, lines, A.M.180 gallery, Prague
2013 - Event in surface, Via gallery, with Marketa Adamcova, Kolin
2013 - Terra, Jana Tyrlich gallery, Prague
2012 - Where is darkness isn’t shadow, Umakart gallery, Brno
2012 - 414, Anne Frank Memorial, with Krystof Ambruz, Brno
2009 - Via gallery, Kolín
GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
2026 - Slow Translation, LOAF Gallery, Wentworth Falls, Australia
2020 - Snakes on skates, Berlinskej model, with Johana Posova and Barbora Fastrova, Prague
2019 - Fake Statue, Prototyp, with Johana Posova and Barbora Fastrova, Prague
2019 - Springtime mystification, Klub AVU, Prague
2017 - The Half-life, Hybernská 4, Prague
2017 - The focus of change, PALBA group, Berlinskej model, Prague
2017 - The Half-life, Villa of castle Valec
2017 - Magdalena del Mar, PALBA group, CEROP Gallery, Kolin
2017 - Silver Wave, Regional Art Gallery in Liberec
2017 - Permanence of flow, The Vysočina Regional Gallery, Jihlava
2016 - Other Visions, PAF, Olomouc
2016 - Tortilla Flat, PALBA group, Underdogs’ Ballroom & Bar, Prague
2016 - Tidal Wave, Nastupiste 1-12, Topolcany, Slovakia
2016 - Vanity Fair, National gallery, Trade Fair Palace, Prague
2016 - ReRecord, Prototyp gallery, Prague
2016 - Butterfly Effect, Industra gallery, Brno
2016 - Dreams That Money Can Buy, (Pillars), Drdova Gallery, Prague
2016 - 1 4 ALL, GAVU, Academy of Fine Arts, Prague
2015 - Kristallin #18, Salzamt, Linz, Austria
2014 - NO TITLE, FAFA gallery, Helsinki
2014 - Screening, Vapaan Taiteen Tila gallery, Helsinki, Finland
2014 - 31 or 42, GAVU, Prague
2014 - Art and shadow, NoD gallery, Prague
2013 - MFDF Jihlava, Puda gallery, Jihlava
2013 - TPCArt, GASK, Kutna Hora
2013 - Memento Naturae, installation with Adela Korbickova, Villa of castle Valec
2012 - Kafka and other birds, Reduta theatre, Brno
2012 - The black fields occasionally spot, Mesic ve dne gallery, Ceske Budejovice
2011 - Floating face of FAVU, Meet Factory, Prague
2011 - neLidske, Reduta theatre, Brno
2010 - Concepto grosso, Barcsay-terem, Budapest
2009 - Museum of Arts and Design, Benesov
2007 - V zahrade gallery, Kolín
EDUCATION:
2014 - Kuvataideakatemia, Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki
2012 - 2016 Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, painting studio of Vladimir Skrepl, Jiri Kovanda and Jan Serych.
2010 - 2012 Faculty Of Fine Arts in Brno, studio intermedia of Vaclav Stratil and Filip Cenek
MUSIC PERFORMANCES:
2026 - Bludny Kamen Festival (with Elsa Aids), Opava
2026 - Scheria space (with Petr Vrba and Vitezslav Spalek), Corfu, Greece
2025 - KovnaFest (solo), Prague
2024 - Underdogs (solo), Prague
2024 - Punctum (solo), Prague
2024 - Festival Poezie Je. (with Laura Zverina), Tábor
2024 - Koh-i-noor (with Kveta Studenka) (open studios), Prague
2022 - Bolderaja Bar (with Klara Svandova), Riga, Latvia
2021 - Galerie XY (with Laura Zverina), Olomouc
MEDIA:
2026 - Modern Renaissance Magazine - Issue 34, (Print Edition)
2025 - Dialogue - Brave Projects - https://www.braveprojects.co.uk/dialogue-martin-zvina
2017 - https://artalk.info/news/vystava-permanence-of-flow-v-jihlave
2016 - Vanity fair exhibition - catalog
2016 - https://artalk.info/news/motyli-efekt-v-industre
2015- https://artalk.info/news/patrani-v-historii-casu
2015 - etc. gallery catalog 2004–2015
BIO:
Martin Zvěřina (1989) is a Czech visual artist whose work spans painting, installation, video, and sound. His practice focuses on the relationship between material transformation and perception, often blurring the boundaries between image, object, and landscape. Drawing on phenomenological thought and Eastern philosophy, he approaches art-making as a meditative and transformative process, in which human experience encounters the elemental properties of material and time.
His work frequently engages with the medium itself, its essence, historical connotations, and at times an ironic questioning of its own limits. He draws inspiration from a wide spectrum of sources, including literature, biological systems, and philosophy, relating them to emotions, relationships, and modes of perception in contemporary society.
After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, he developed a distinctive practice grounded in material experimentation and sensitivity to environment. He repeatedly returns to the motifs of landscape and the body, not as fixed objects, but as relational fields between color, light, and space. From this perspective, his work resonates with late nineteenth-century painting, when attention to atmosphere, duration, and the inner experience of seeing began to move away from stable modes of representation, partly as a response to industrialization and the rise of capitalist structures, offering a counterpoint to technological and social change. In this sense, he approaches the canvas as a site where the visible world is transformed through subjective time into something fluid, open, and mutable, as a mode of working with attention that consciously positions itself against contemporary forms of technological and economic acceleration.
Poetry and experimental literature play a significant role in his practice, particularly texts in which language functions as a tool for exploring unconscious processes and inner transformation. He finds inspiration, for example, in the circle of Le Grand Jeu or in the writings of Věra Linhartová, texts in which language operates as an act of naming that simultaneously establishes and closes meaning. Language here is not merely a vehicle of communication, but a symbolic and structuring principle of experience, akin to the way image or sound functions in his work.
Alongside his visual practice, Zvěřina also works with sound and music, which he approaches as a natural extension of his material practice. Drawing on field recordings and improvisation rooted in the traditions of the musical avant-garde, he shapes sound through processes of layering, distortion, and temporal modulation, paralleling his approach to visual media.
He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (painting studio of Vladimír Skrepl), at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno (Intermedia studio of Václav Stratil), and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Finland. He has completed numerous residencies and internships in Germany, Belgium, Greece, Austria, Finland, and the Czech Republic.
Since 2010, he has been active on both the visual art and music scenes in the Czech Republic and internationally. He has exhibited in numerous private, state, and regional institutions and has been a member of several experimental music groups.
Artist statement:
My painting explores the relationships between the body, nature, and inner experience. I am drawn to forms in which the human body merges with landscapes, vegetal structures, and geological formations. Organic fragments, sinewy extensions, and shifting surfaces create environments in which the boundaries between the human and the nonhuman become uncertain. Through painting, I gradually shape a cosmos of my own, whose forms and relationships follow the inner logic of the image rather than necessarily conforming to the laws of the visible world. I approach landscape not as a fixed location, but as a network of relations in a constant state of formation and change.
For me, painting is a process of gradually entering the image, in which an initial idea develops while simultaneously losing its certainty. I work intuitively, in a process close to active imagination, allowing forms and associations to emerge from the unconscious and acquire a logic of their own. Painting becomes a primordial terrain of psychic improvisation, where images emerge, transform, and gradually develop a visual language of their own. Layering, overpainting, and disrupting existing structures allow me to build up and dismantle the image at the same time. I combine oil paint with wax, sand, and wood ash, allowing their material properties to participate in a process through which the image is gradually revealed, altered, and concealed again.
I am interested in the moment when an image ceases to function as a representation of something familiar and begins to exist as an autonomous space. The viewer may move between recognition and uncertainty without arriving at a definitive interpretation. The image becomes not merely something to look at, but an environment that draws the viewer in and unsettles the usual distance between observer and observed. Within this experience, I look for the possibility of relating to reality differently, beyond the processes of naming, categorisation, and rational understanding.
I explore similar principles in my sound practice, which draws on improvisation, field recordings, and the layering of sonic fragments. I approach painting and sound as temporal processes in which meaning emerges through the relationships between layers, their coexistence, and their mutual disruption. I am interested in their capacity to create experiences in which the boundaries between inner and outer, body and environment, image and reality become permeable.
