Opava Art Group Bludný kámen Returns to the House of Arts After 20 Years With an Unusual Exhibition
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The Opava-based art collective Bludný kámen is marking its 30th anniversary with the exhibition "Malá domů" at the Opava House of Arts — the very building where the group worked from 1999 to 2008 and staged around 250 exhibitions. The project opens almost twenty years after the collective left this space.
Founded in 1995 as a club and tearoom, the group has grown over the decades into one of the key players on the independent cultural scenes of Opava and Ostrava. Its programme has always gone beyond the visual arts to include experimental music, sound projects, performance and literature. After leaving the House of Arts, the group didn't disappear — it found a new home at the Cella Gallery and regularly runs its own (non)festival at the Kozmice Bird Meadows. In 2024 the collective received the Kalený Jantar award as part of the Moravian-Silesian Jantar Art Awards for its contribution to independent and experimental art.
Exhibition as a Chain of Decisions
The title "Malá domů" refers both to the group's return to the House of Arts and to the way it created temporary "homes" for itself in various corners of Opava and its surroundings after leaving the institution. There's also a touch of self-irony in the name — a nod to the narrow circle of regular viewers of experimental art and music the collective has worked with for decades.
The organisers aren't simply telling the story of the collective — they want to change the very way art is presented. Visitors will find themselves not only in front of artworks, but inside an archive, at a performance, during a sound event, or in a tearoom reminiscent of the group's very first space. The project will span the entire House of Arts building, the neighbouring Church of St Wenceslas, the Cella Gallery and the streets of Opava.
More Than 30 Curators and a Secret List of Artists
The project's key principle is joint curation. The concept's authors — Jakub Frank, Matěj Frank and Martin Klimeš — invited more than thirty curators. Twenty-five of them were selected for the exhibition's main group section, each choosing one work that continues from the previous curator's choice. The exhibition thus takes shape as a chain of decisions, with the project's final form left undetermined in advance.
The starting point was a series of drawings by Opava-born artist Dušan Hladěk. "The list of artists is still being kept secret — we're only publishing the names of the curators who selected the works one after another," says Jakub Frank. According to him, the show will survey various forms of contemporary visual and audiovisual art, bringing together well-known names with lesser-known artists. "It all began with a draw, and the only fixed element was Dušan Hladěk's opening work — everything else happens, you might say, without any guarantees," he adds.
An Open Process Instead of a Finished Result
The element of uncertainty is a fundamentally important part of the concept. The exhibition won't be a closed set of works that visitors view from start to finish: individual parts will change and expand through performances, concerts, sound events and literary readings featuring the invited curators.
"For me, meeting Martin Klimeš and Bludný kámen in 2005, right here at the House of Arts, was formative. That's why it felt especially important to create space for their return here, on the occasion of the group's thirty years working in Opava," says House of Arts curator Lenka Bergerová.
Part of the project is also the book "XXXBK: Mořena," dedicated to the collective's thirty-year history. The publication brings together texts by art historians, members of Bludný kámen and their long-time collaborators, chronicling exhibitions, sound projects, informal collaborative networks, and the periods when the group wandered between different venues in search of a new home. The book is illustrated by Marian Palla.
Around Prague, based on reporting by ostravan.cz
