Julia Gryboś & Barbora Zentková: MOONFLOWER

Galerie NoD
Barbora Zentková & Julia Gryboś
Moonflower
Curated by: Pavel Kubesa
Text by: Ján Gajdušek & Tereza Havlovicová
27. 11. 2025 – 10. 1. 2026
Opening: 26. 11. 2025, 18:00

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To immerse oneself in music as if beneath the surface.
To dive even deeper. Into oneself. Into memories. Safe and soft.

To separate the artistic practice of Barbora Zentková and Julia Gryboś from music seems almost impossible. It is precisely music that completes the context of all the layers of the exhibited works, forms, materials, and processes. It definitively consolidates the conceptual framework. It offers a clue as to which path we, as visitors to the exhibition, might take: whether outward, along a rational route, examining the socio-critical levels of the works, the history of the materials used, environmental contexts and much more; or inward, into our own interior, thoughts, free associations, the unconscious. It is music that most insistently guides us toward immersion – first into its own flow, tones, and rhythm, and then into our own depths.

Danger is sharp. Safety is soft.
The past. Can memories ever truly be impersonal?

The exhibition space is softened by layers of gauze and textiles. The floor is covered with recycled linen and cotton fabrics. Every step here feels softer. What exactly is this softness like? Freshly fallen snow? Could it be the softness of moon dust? A sleeping mat? Fallen autumn leaves? Spring moss? None of these images is exact, and yet there is something of each in it – something pleasantly familiar, close and safe.

The layers of fabric return us to the theme of time, which, in a broader horizon, cannot be perceived outside of layers. Through them, time is inscribed into tree trunks and rocks, just as our memories are stored at different depths of recollection, with access to them shifting over the course of a lifetime. The mention of vegetal nature (tree), inanimate matter (rock) and the human is no coincidence. Flow, immersion, rhythm, temporality, recyclability, processuality – all these are categories that connect the human with the non-human, with nature, the environment, the past, the “natural”. The exhibition is not detached from the world “out there”. It follows on from it, responds to it. Temporal, bodily and social frameworks intertwine in the exhibited works, rendered in a subtle symbolism that points to our collective and individual experiences of time and to their limitations.

To walk all the way to the end and set out in the opposite direction.

If we are able to truly immerse ourselves in the works of Barbora Zentková and Julia Gryboś – ideally repeatedly and over a longer duration – a natural desire arises to understand that from which this experience grows. A more rational perspective leads us to the materials and layers of meaning: the textiles on the floor were originally intended to protect agricultural soil, the gauze carries a history of caring for the wounded body, and the recycled wax in the metal floral verticals re-enters circulation. The motif of protection is thus inscribed directly into the structure of the installation, and it is up to us to reflect on how we, as a society, position ourselves in relation to it – whom we protect and who is left without support.

The perception of time is revealed in its cultural and social conditionality, which affects both individuals and society as a whole. Within this framework, we may understand the exhibition title Moonflower (Ipomoea alba) as an apt metaphor. It is the name of a plant that opens at night and closes again at dawn, living in a cyclical, “non-productive” time outside the daytime “regime of performance”. In a similar way, Gryboś and Zentková create environments in which one can temporarily step out of linear, performance-oriented time and enter a time that is lived, embodied, and rhythmic. Their demanding, long-lasting, often repeated material processes and open-ended sound events (limited only by fatigue) recalibrate our sensitivity to work, care, and exhaustion. The exhibition thus discreetly suggests that alongside “useful” and “wasted” time, there also exists time that is “lived and shared” – and that sustainability here is not only a matter of recycling, but also a form of attention that requires perseverance, cooperation, and a willingness to stay with the material and with others, just as the moonflower itself needs enough time and darkness in order to bloom.

Ján Gajdušek & Tereza Havlovicová

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Barbora Zentková (*1986) and Julia Gryboś (*1988) have been collaborating as an artistic duo since 2010. A constant in their work is a dialogue with the medium of painting, which they studied, yet they significantly distanced themselves from its standard conception already in their joint diploma project, defended in 2013 at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Brno University of Technology (where they also completed their doctoral studies in 2023). Since the mid-2010s, they have focused primarily on site-responsive interventions and installations, which often become the setting for performative sound events.

Barbora Zentková comes from Slovakia, Julia Gryboś from Poland; they currently live and work in Berlin. The stable background of their Berlin studio, where they have worked since 2020, has brought a more intense interest in object-making and in the craft of working with materials into their practice. This shift was heralded by the exhibitions One-Legged Pigeon (Galerie Kostka) and Teabags on Eyelids (Galerie TIC Brno) in 2021. Without abandoning the site-responsive character of their practice, in recent years they have also moved towards a stable, clearly recognizable visual language based on a combination of hand-dyed textiles, metal and wax. This has been strongly articulated especially in exhibitions realized over the past two years in Germany, Slovakia, Poland, and, in 2022 (as part of the MOVE festival), also at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.