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Vojtěch Novák (b. 1992) is a multidisciplinary artist, an independent curator, and a researcher at SARN – Swiss Artistic Research Network.
He lives and works in the Czech Republic. He graduated from UMPRUM in Prague and completed study visits at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, AVU in Prague, and ZHdK in Zurich. He was a finalist for the Jan Naaijkens Prize. He cofounded the student initiative Ateliéru bez vedoucího (Studio Without a Head) and the PGS collective, which realizes off-site exhibition projects. He has participated in many large-scale shows, such as documenta 14 in Kassel, Manifesta 11 in Zurich, OFF-Biennale in Budapest, and Alytus Biennial, as well as numerous other group exhibitions in the Czech Republic and abroad. He was a member of the curatorial team at City Surfer Office in Prague, and he is currently the program director at City Gallery Pardubice (GAMPA).
Vojtěch Novák’s artistic output is not easy to categorize. He often works in temporary groups and interdisciplinary collaborations, and although at first glance his oeuvre may seem nonlinear, there is a clear long-term strategy behind it. He embeds his creative practice in specific situations and conditions in which he sees transformative potential. At the moment, he has taken on the role of a facilitator who believes that everyone has something to offer—whether they are artists, viewers, colleagues in a gallery, or the actors he encounters when working in broader social contexts, such as the education system.
Even his independent projects—regardless of their various media and themes—contain elements of processuality. He does not think of them as finished results but repeatedly returns to them, reopens them, recontextualizes them, and examines their transformations. The range of his interests is broad: Sometimes he might draw on historical ornamental hermetism and the figure of the “hired hermit,” other times on linguistic reasoning, and still other times on the primitive technology of the crystal radio, which converts radio frequencies into sound.
Publication: 25. 02. 2026
