In her latest body of work, which, after its debut at the National Gallery Prague, curated by Adam Budak, is being shown in Germany for the first time with this exhibition, Jitka Hanzlová deals with the element of water in its various appearances, states of aggregation and fields of meaning.  “Jitka Hanzlová goes beyond the constraints of representation, narrating the clouds and the water as well as the states in between as transparent layers of surfaces. (…) Perceived in the context of her entire oeuvre to date, WATER is a climax and a (symbolic) closure of a journey towards the understanding of the essence of nature, human and non-human: a cloud as part of the visible world, an ambiguous, elusive and ephemeral anti-matter (…), a mixture and ceaseless permutation of the elements that — perhaps silently, as a recapitulation — makes us comprehend why this, no other, world is our habitat and stream of life.“ Adam Budak

Jitka Hanzlová, b. 1958 in Náchod (CSSR), came to Germany in 1982. From 1987 to 1994 she studied visual communication with a focus on photography at the University of Essen. In 1993 she received the Otto Steinert Prize, in 1995 the scholarship of the DG BANK Frankfurt, in 2003 the Grand Prix Award, Arles, in 2007 the Paris Photo Prize for Contemporary Photography. From 2005 to 2007 the artist taught at the Academy of Arts in Hamburg and from 2012 to 2016 at the Zurich University of the Arts. She has presented her work in numerous international solo exhibitions, most recently in a retrospective at the National Gallery in Prague, previously at the National Gallery of Scotland (2013), Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid (2012), Museum Folkwang Essen (2006), Fotomuseum Winterthur (2001), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2001) and Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2000).   Her work is held in the permanent collections of several major museums, as well as private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art New York, Museum Folkwang Essen, San Francisco MOMA, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, Holland, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK, and Seattle Art Museum, USA.