Woods: Side Path
Artistic interventions at Woods
26–27 July 2025
A side path is a trail that runs parallel to a frequently traveled route. There are several reasons why these paths are chosen over clearly marked and planned ones: side paths are often designed as detours or discreet routes that cut distances and keep you out of sight. Furthermore, side paths offer the chance to experience surroundings from a less conventional viewpoint. These routes adapt to the topography and take advantage of the most favorable landforms, blending in with the place, its constructions and forms of life.
Side Path's four artistic interventions explore, in very different ways, the relations between art and context. The contributions by Michael Kleine, Kris Lemsalu, Claudia Rebeca Lorenzo, and Lenka Vítková engage with the specificity of the site and challenge the permeability of their respective practices. In fact, the artists’ approaches emerge from a dialogue with Woods and its most immediate surroundings.
Kris Lemsalu's imaginary is populated by hybrid creatures, improbable settings, and exuberant ceremonies. For some time now, the artist has been producing a series of ceramic works that challenge conventions in terms of their representations and motifs, but also in their use of traditional techniques for modeling and glazing. In her contribution to Side Path, Lemsalu brings these elements together in a sort of ritual set around an artificial pond. The unstable and reflective element of water provides the setting for a musical fable in which the artists evoke a state of alignment between the eerie and the seductive.
Michael Kleine’s practice recontextualizes artistic and historical objects by subtly altering the architectural settings in which they appear. His work blurs conventional distinctions between contemporary and historical art, public space, and theater, shaping experiences that strike a balance between allowing space for the spectator and confronting them with an orchestrated array of stimuli. In Cabin, Kleine uses architecture, sculpture, and scenography to transform a remote forest hut into a narrative of retreat and privacy. Subtle interventions and crafted glass elements – inserted as windows – shape the composed mood. These sculptural objects are encountered in solitude, within a private space entered alone, with a key.
Claudia Rebeca Lorenzo describes the formal development of her work using notions such as rhythm, transparency, and reflection. Through a series of protruding elements, the artist exposes patterns of construction that blur the line between human and non-human fabrication. As foreign bodies, these grow from pre-existing structures, in this case trees, to define their volumes and spatial distribution. The artist is interested in the spectral presence of these pieces, which manifest a desire to make a place for themselves.
Lenka Vítková’s primary artistic medium is painting. Occasionally, she also writes texts composed of fragments of poetic images, personal memories, and factual descriptions. Unlike her paintings, her texts are created in response to a specific situation – an event – an exhibition. Lenka’s distinctive minimalist painting is based on the emotional quality of color shades and the reduction of forms; her work suppresses the difference between the attention given to the depicted motifs and the spaces outside them. In her work paintings and texts represent two different voices. For Side Path, Lenka Vítková has written a work of the same title, which will be brought to life with a walk through the surrounding meadows and forests.
Side Path aims to foster artistic practices grounded in open and experimental models. The production conditions for the interventions are dynamic and responsive to external factors. We invite you to consider how these elements have shaped the artists’ proposals and influence the modes of engagement they use.
Side Path also addresses questions related to specificity and institutionality, both understood as predominant frameworks that often determine artistic discourse, including protocols of display, public access, and exchange. While it is difficult to attribute a transformation in the practice of these four artists to particular aspects of the project, it is worth considering their work in this context, both for the constraints it imposes and for the potential for openness, expansiveness, and cross-pollination.
Program
Saturday 26 July
12 pm: Introduction and welcome
12–1 pm: Refreshments
7–8 pm: Dinner
8–9 pm: Campfire
9 pm: Performance by Kris Lemsalu with musical accompaniment by Roman Lemberg
Sunday 27 July
9–10 am: Breakfast
1–2 pm: Lunch
5 pm: Snacks and goodbye
Access to works and MAP with all locations
Cabin by Michael Kleine will be accessible on Saturday from 12–7 pm and on Sunday from 9–5 pm. We recommend visiting the installation alone or in pairs at most. The key to the cabin is hanging next to the entrance door. Please do not touch the fragile glass objects and make sure to lock the cabin after your visit and hang the key back in the same place.
Lenka Vítková’s texts are bound into a small booklet titled Side Path, which will be available at the starting point of the route. Following the written instructions, the walk takes approximately one hour and is only possible during daylight, so we recommend setting out earlier in the day—no later than 7 pm. We suggest taking the walk alone.
ZENKALI by Kris Lemsalu is near the Forest kitchen.
To reach Claudia Rebeca Loreno's Ramito, you can take one of two different paths. The access point for each path is marked on the map with numbers 8 and 9. Once you reach these points, follow the green marks.
2. Kris Lemsalu: ZENKALI
3. Claudia Rebeca Lorenzo: Ramito
4. Lenka Vítková: Side Path – start of the route
5. Tree shrine
6. Entrance to the site
7. Kitchen
8. Gate
9. Forest road
10. Parking at the water treatment plant
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HOW TO FIND US
MAP
By train: to the station Dolní Dobrouč, then walk about 30min to the Tree Shrine at the Šušek pond. There turn left onto the forest path uphill.
By car: to the village Písečná u Žamberka, there between the pub Růženka and the roundabout turn off and follow the dead end road all the way to the Parking at the water treatment plant. Please park your car there. Then keep walking to the Šušek pond and at the Tree Shrine turn onto the marked forest path uphill.
WHAT TO BRING
Please bring your own plate, mug, cutlery, headgear or umbrella, as well as a power bank. In case you are staying overnight, we also recommend a headlamp or other handheld light and a pillow or mattress for sitting in the meadow or woods during the program. It usually gets very cold at night, so warm clothing or a blanket is also recommended. We do not have electricity or internet in the forest.
In the forest, we try to burden nature and the soil as little as possible, and therefore we would like to kindly ask you to take hygiene products from organic production (soaps, repellants, shampoos, toothpaste, etc.).
Please make sure to keep both the forest gate (6) and the entrance gate (8) closed, as there are animals (goats and sheep) on the land. There are goats and sheep living on the plot, so we kindly ask that you leave your dogs at home. Please do not feed the animals and do not enter the areas of the property where trees and shrubs are planted (especially orchards and swale). Thank you.
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Woods: Side Path
Artistic interventions at Woods
26–27 July 2025
Participating artists: Kris Lemsalu, Michael Kleine, Claudia Rebeca Lorenzo, Lenka Vítková
Guest musician: Roman Lemberg
Curators: Zuzana Blochová, Marc Navarro
Production: Karolína Mikesková, Veronika Šilarová
Technical production and installation: Lukáš Doležel, Ryan Kalkman, Sebastián González Miranda, Jan Petrů
Forest kitchen: Johana Bažantová, Zdena Lantová
Graphic design: Róbert Púček
Photography: Markéta Sasi Choma, Jan Kolský
Translations: Veronika Šilarová, Guy Tabachnick
Special thanks to Václav Girsa; Zdeněk Mašek; Dan Nový; Pavlína Verbíková; Mirek Verbík; Michal Ullrich, Ervín Černý, and Jenda Jeřábek – Kolektiv Ateliers; Studio Hrdinů; and the Emblem Prague Hotel
With the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the Czech-German Fund for the Future, and the Institut Ramon Llull
* Image: Art intervention by Jiří Kovanda, Quotes. Or Dots? from the symposium More-than-Human Curiosity, Woods, 2023. Photo by Johana Pošová