What Burns, Endures

Galerie Entrance's exhibition program for 2026 is based on an ecological understanding of the forest as an interconnected organism, in which trees, fungi, soil, and microorganisms create a network of sharing, cooperation, and memory. The inspiration is the book Finding the Mother Tree (2021) by Canadian forest ecologist Suzanne Simard. The exhibition "What Burns, Endures" is dedicated to the disruption of forest ecosystems—especially as a result of fires, logging, and landscape colonization—but also to subsequent possibilities for regeneration. The exhibited works address the critical state of forests after fire or other destructive events. It presents a collective project focused on the transformation of the forest landscape in Czechia, with an emphasis on the 2022 fire in the České Švýcarsko National Park, and stories between past destruction and subsequent difficult renewal. Forests in the Czech Republic are almost entirely anthropogenic, meaning artificial in origin; original natural stands—virgin forests—make up less than 1% of the total area. The current appearance of Czech forests is the result of massive human activity, which began to fundamentally change the landscape from medieval colonization and culminated in the introduction of planned forest management in the 18th and 19th centuries. The original composition of forests in our territory primarily consisted of mixed and deciduous forests. Pure spruce stands naturally occurred only in high mountainous areas or on waterlogged peat bogs. However, for the purpose of rapid production of quality timber, economic forests of age classes began to be widely established in the 18th century. Original diverse deciduous forests were replaced by artificially planted coniferous monocultures (mainly spruce and pine), often even in lowlands where these trees do not have natural conditions. Most Czech forests today are thus, in the long term, "wooden plantations" which, due to their unnatural origin and low species diversity, are less resistant to drought and bark beetle calamities. Despite the management of forest stands in terms of uncompromising adaptation for timber extraction, we still encounter a certain proud nostalgia in relation to "our forests," which we tend to perceive as national wealth and, across generations, consider them to be the true natural environment. Wallpapers with photographs of a coniferous forest after a fire covering the gallery walls and smaller formats of framed photographs of human interventions in the forest environment are the work of Tomáš Hrůza. Tomáš Hrůza lives alternately in Prague and the village of Miřenice in Southwest Bohemia, where the demands and needs of nature are noticeably more apparent than in the city. He is one of the founders of the Fotograf 07 platform and the independent cultural hub ArtMap. With Jiří Zemánek, he organizes, under the auspices of Pilgrim – Potulná univerzita přírody, a program focusing on revising the relationship between humans and nature. He is primarily interested in the poetic reflection of nature, but many of his works also have a strong ecological undertone. In addition to documentary photographs, Hrůza is the creator of a dominant spatial installation in the form of a wooden shelter made from cut-down deadwood and collected coniferous branches, donated by Lesy hlavního města Prahy, in which it is possible to watch the author's film from the series We Have Never Been Forest (2023). This wooden object, evoking a forest refuge, symbolically provides shelter from the ravages of the elements, or from difficult considerations about human management of nature. The spatial installation in the front part of the gallery is complemented by old, non-functional wood-burning stoves, in which a band of photographs on textile is symbolically fed into the fire. Here, in a seemingly endless collage, discarded Christmas trees are captured in various stages of needle shedding, some looking more depressing, others more cheerful and still green—with these still beautiful specimens, the question arises even more acutely with what ease, even ruthlessness, we consume our natural resources for the purpose of fulfilling a pleasant, yet very shortsighted tradition towards nature. Bronislava Bakule Malá is an artist who combines sculpture, painting, and graphic art in her practice. Across various media and themes, her dominant feature is an authentic statement stemming from her own experience of the surrounding world, a synthesis of the general and the subjective. She works with both concrete and abstract themes, in which the hidden order or variable natural phenomena become visible. In the exhibition, she presents three paintings addressing the extractivist attitude towards forest wealth. Selection (2024), Forests of the Czech Republic (2024), and Memory (2024) depict the forest in a suggestively oppressive color scheme, where areas designated for felling are marked, or where it is evident that they have been significantly thinned by human intervention in recent times. The author, who comes from Vysočina and has a close connection to the local forests, repeatedly encounters a massive transformation of the landscape of her childhood, in the process of which all familiar landmarks and beloved places are gradually erased. The forests in her depictions are often more of an echo, a memory of a realm of majestic trees that no longer exists in that form today. The new large-format work Drought (2026) is then an example of thinking about another of the dangers that are inevitably rushing towards our natural ecosystems. Nonviolence. Forest Research Platform. is a research project initiated by the German artist Christl Mudrak. Interactive processes in the natural environment, in which people, as well as animals and plants, are involved as collaborators, serve in this research project to explore authorship as a connecting and communicative element. In a forest that has been created and managed by human hands, methods and principles of non-violence towards all forms of life are explored and reflected upon through artistic means. The project is based on a fundamental vision: Imagine for a moment that all life forms and substances in this place were considered equal from a human perspective—what implications could this have for our actions and ways of coexistence? Over several years, this project, which is being developed in a forest area near Berlin, invites international artists to create permanent works in the designated area based on the premise of coexistence in the spirit of non-violence. Regular guided tours, workshops, and informal meetings are also held here, as are artistic performances, temporary interventions, and lectures. All these outputs offer the public and participating artists diverse perspectives on the themes of the gradually emerging collective work. Within the "What Burns, Endures" exhibition, the project is presented through a website, which anyone can browse according to their interest and time availability. The website also serves as an archive of realized artistic interventions, an occasional diary mapping the presence and behavior of animals in the transformed forest, or the development of weather, and an information board about upcoming events. It thus offers a cautious optimistic outlook on the possible future management of natural ecosystems, which we as a society have the opportunity to manage. It brings inspiration for greater consideration in managing our natural environment, which gives us so much, even when we are not physically drawing from it or extracting industrial commodities in a given case.