This autumn, 8smička returns to the continuation of a series of exhibitions rooted in the Rýzner Family Collection, which today comprises more than nine hundred artworks. The expanding scope of the collection calls for new methods of documentation and research into key contextual information. Since this year, it has been complemented by a publicly accessible virtual database, whose browsing experience evokes the act of leafing through a catalogue of goods. We are increasingly aware that working with an art collection – and its cataloguing in particular – often reduces the value of artworks to a set of technical data: material, technique or insurance value. While last year’s exhibition Prolog: Pozdní sběr (Prologue: Late Harvest) presented the most recent acquisitions by contemporary artists and examined the functioning of the art market, the current project Intermezzo: Katalog zboží (Intermezzo: Catalogue of Goods) focuses on works from artistic estates. It continues the theme of acquisitions, but this time observes how the work of artists who are no longer alive is transformed into a commodity, and how forgotten artworks re-enter the circulation of the art world.

The exhibition presents paintings by Olga Karlíková (1923–2004), reflecting a conscious observation of landscape and a deep relationship with nature, and by Irena Dědičová (1932–1987), whose work remains less well known in the Czech context due to her emigration to Paris and premature death. The painterly section is complemented by a group of works by Miloš Ševčík (1939–2007), whose organic, imaginative motifs have been rediscovered only in recent years. The exhibition also includes an archival segment featuring chronicles, photographs and ephemeral records of happenings by the Křižovnická škola čistého humoru bez vtipu(Crusaders’ School of Pure Humour Without Wit).

For this exhibition, which is primarily drawn from the 8smička depository, contemporary visual artist Zbyněk Baladrán was invited to contribute a work from his series Jarmark umění (Art Fair), which materialises the exhibition’s central theme – the transformation of the artwork into a commodity. Intermezzo: Katalog zboží(Intermezzo: Catalogue of Goods) is the penultimate chapter of an exhibition trilogy, which will culminate in 2026 with the project Továrna na krásno (The Beauty Factory) – a recapitulation of thirty years of collecting modern and contemporary art in Humpolec.