Exhibition Vrstvy | Layers

The exhibition Layers by artist Lenka Lučenič presents gum bichromate printing as a medium suspended between photography, painting, and craft. This historical technique, developed mainly at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, transforms a photographic image into a tangible, unrepeatable artifact: it emerges slowly, through light, pigment, water, and the gesture of the hand.

Lenka Lučenič is one of our key Victory Art artists, and we are absolutely thrilled to open the very first exhibition at this Victory Art pop-up gallery together with an artist who comes directly from the local area where this pop-up gallery is based. This local connection gives the exhibition Layers a special significance and makes this opening a truly meaningful moment for the community.

"When I work with gum printing, I ask myself not only what technique it is, but above all what it shows me that another does not," says artist Lenka Lučenič. This question lies at the very heart of the exhibition. Here, gum printing is not merely a way of reproducing an image, but a tool for exploring how colour changes our perception of photography, memory, and reality itself.

The creative process and layering of pigments

The title Layers refers directly to the process behind the works. A light-sensitive layer made of gum arabic, pigment, and a photosensitive component is brushed onto paper, exposed to UV light, and then gradually washed out in water. Each layer carries a trace of decision, time, and chance. With multiple printing passes, the image is rebuilt anew – pigment by pigment, tone by tone, layer by layer.

The colour freedom of gum printing allows the artist to work with the image in various ways. Monochromatic prints focus attention on atmosphere, light, and the depth of a single tone; duotones and creative multicolour layering create unexpected, often painterly relationships between warm and cool colours. Through three- or four-colour printing, a full-colour image can instead emerge, in which individual pigment layers merge into a complex visual reality.

A dialogue between cyanotype and gum printing

An important space for experimentation is also the combination of gum printing with cyanotype. The intense blue base layer of a cyanotype can be overlaid with the warm pigments of gum printing, transforming its character and creating subtle, rich colour dialogues. Here, colour is not a mere addition to the photographic image, but an active carrier of meaning, mood, and emotion.

The exhibition Layers invites viewers to slow down and perceive the image in its material form: the texture of the paper, visible brush strokes, subtle unevenness, and the depth of the pigment. It is a celebration of patience, craftsmanship, and the creative process, in which photography ceases to be an instant record and becomes a space for new ways of seeing.

About the artist: Lenka Lučenič

Lenka Lučenič is a visual artist and researcher who has long been dedicated to the systematic revival, theoretical research, and artistic reinterpretation of historical photographic techniques. In her academic and publishing work, she offers an in-depth look into forgotten processes – she is the author of the peer-reviewed study Bromografie známá neznáma (2025), published in the prestigious journal Historická fotografie (National Technical Museum and National Archives in Prague), as well as the study Gumotlač (2022, National Archives in Prague and the Technical Museum Brno).

Her exhibition practice includes major solo and international group projects. Her solo exhibitions include Bromografie známa neznáma (2026, Regional Jewish Museum – Synagogue and Rabbi's House, Polná; 2025, Galeria Sztuki A1, Krakow), as well as Řepik a Pampeliška (2019, Krakow) and Diky moc XXIII. Krajiny na povrchu (2019, Photogether Gallery, Zlín).

Internationally, she regularly presents her work at prestigious photography platforms, including PhotoFringe in Krakow (Historical techniques of Photography, 2025; Historical techniques in CUBE, 2016; Na wlasny rachunek, 2015), the Month of Photography festival in Bratislava (Šťastný stesk, Open Gallery, 2022), Galerie G4 in Cheb (Černá kostka, bílé jablko, 2022), and Galerie Fotografic in Prague (joint exhibition Repaired and Reconstructed, 2021). Through academic and independent exhibitions (UTB Zlín, ALUO Ljubljana, Pokoje Prague, Kaštieľ Smižany), she continuously develops a dialogue between the craft tradition of fine photographic printing and contemporary visual language.