In the Moonlight
(Jaroslav Valečka, Martin Salajka, Kristýna Erbenová)
Curator: Veronika Marešová
Producer: A Qin Straková
Production Assistant: Serena Zhang
CCC Gallery
Shounzunag Street
Beijing
Open daily except Mondays, 10 a.m.–6 p.m., through August 24
The exhibition concept *In the Moonlight* brings together the artistic approaches of three artists: Jaroslava Valečka, a painter of melodramatic landscapes and rural festivals and rituals; Martin Salajka, a painter who captures extraordinary situations linked to the cycle of nature, at times evoking almost mythological scenes; and Kristýna Erbenová, a photographer who captures her authentic images in the wild landscape under a full moon. What unites the three artists, despite their differences, is a thematic immersion into the depths of the night and its magical light. The exhibited works capture the melancholic beauty of the night as well as its dark perils, while simultaneously highlighting the specific atmospheric lighting transitions between day and night—from dusk to dawn. The distinctive painterly approaches of Valečka and Salajko are interspersed with the contributions of Kristýna Erbenová, who, with her feminine energy, brings another striking element of experimental photography to the exhibition. Another important connecting thread is their collaborative, focused creative work during their residency at CCC—Czech China Contemporary in Beijing.
The work of Jaroslav Valečka (*1972) is firmly rooted in the border landscape of northern Bohemia (along the Czech-German border). Valečka is a painter of stories: he does not view the landscape as a mere model for a postcard-style depiction, but as a living organism that carries the memory of human destinies. His paintings are visual chronicles—they capture the countryside in moments of collective joy and quiet sorrow interwoven with local legends. An inspiring encounter with Chinese culture and its distinctive aesthetics offers the artist the opportunity to juxtapose the Central European landscape of memory with a new geographical and mental horizon.
The work of Martin Salajka (*1981) balances between raw naturalism, ritual mythology, and pure intuition, with animal motifs (owls, wolves, fish) often functioning as demonic guardians in frozen time. His distinctive technique combines layering classic linocut plates on canvas with painterly interventions using acrylics and oil pastel drawings, resulting in dense compositions of packs and natural structures. Through reduction to visual symbols and contrasting colors, Salajka constructs visually powerful landscapes of the imagination that evoke the animal essence of nature.
Photographer Kristýna Erbenová (*1987) explores the boundaries of human existence through an intuitive journey through the nighttime landscape—from the Czech Republic, through Australia, to Beijing, China. Her nocturnal journey is captured on vintage film stock, where, using long exposures, she reveals a world as it would be if we could see the invisible. Exilic melancholy and poetic moments are reflected in mysterious portraits of figures and floral compositions in absolute stillness, which blend with the wild outdoors under the starlight. Through the silence of the night and the moonlight, she reveals the hidden and dark places of the human psyche. Erbenová thus sensitively intertwines the painterly approaches of both colleagues. This intertwining culminates in four canvases (a collaboration between Erbenová and Salajka), in which a direct, experimental dialogue between the mediums of painting and photography takes place.
The presented works remind us that the landscape is not merely a physical space, but also a mirror of collective memory and the human soul. Above this, however, lies another level with its own autonomous power: nature itself—the wild animals and plants within it—which open up other dimensions of understanding the world and the universe.
Veronika Marešová, Beijing 2026