Igor Hosnedl
Milky Way
Solo exhibition
April 25 – June 20, 2026
Spring tour of SpinnereiGalleries
Saturday, April 25, 11 am – 8 pm
Sunday, April 26, 11 am – 4 pm
The Leipzig gallery is barrier-free. A a wheelchair ramp is on site.
Please contact us in case of any further questions at +49-341-9607886.
Have a look into the flyer with exhibition text, short biography and selected images:
EXHIBITION FLYER
Conversation with Igor Hosnedl about his exhibition Milky Way at Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig, 2026:
EIGEN + ART: The title of the exhibition is Milky Way. Is there a specific reason or idea behind this name?
Igor Hosnedl: I wanted a soft, gentle title full of emotions. It is related to the fragility of childhood, relationships and the size of the unknown universe in contrast to the size of our own emotions here on earth. Over time, art has become a means of expressing myself through a very intimate environment. I describe my own emotions a lot and through them my own personal life. I am happy for this, I have created such a safe place for myself where I can hide or offer it to others. Milky Way is a journey and the arms of home at the same time.
More than a year ago you moved back to Moravia, the Czech Republic, where you grew up. What does that mean to you?
When we were waiting for our son to be born, we often talked about whether we would really return to the Czech Republic and whether it would be directly to our home region. It was at a time when we had already spent almost seven years in Berlin. During that time, Berlin had become our second home in the true sense of the word. Being back in our home region means for us to be in the arms of our families, which helps us a lot. It means sharing time together with children, parents, siblings and grandparents, it is a gift.
Please tell us something about your education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.
At that time, the academy was quite strictly focused on classical art techniques such as painting and sculpture. There was a lot of emphasis on results, I often felt under pressure and worried whether what I was doing would be good. I was a bit of an outsider. Sometimes I took my studies a bit lightly. With hindsight, I see the time spent at the Academy of Fine Arts as a time of searching for myself. Despite all the mixed feelings, I am happy to have studied at the Academy of Fine Arts. I love art, being surrounded by it and being a part of it. Studying art can be quite demanding if tangible results are expected from it. For me, it was important to grant myself more time after graduating from the academy to get to know myself.
What is the creative process behind your works? Do you start with sketches, or do they go straight onto a blank canvas?
I draw a lot. Without drawings I wouldn’t be able to build a painting. There’s always a drawing first and then a painting. Ideas come in different ways. They’re always waiting around the corner but they’re never immediately apparent. I guess a lot depends on the moment of a certain inner tension, fascination and subsequent immersion in the atmosphere that could define the drawing and its narrative. I make a selection - many drawings remain just drawings and don’t transform into a painting.
How did you get from a purely drawing course to drawing on canvas? How do you perceive your current drawings within your overall work?
It was a gradual process. It took a long time to find the path to follow and the way to find the moment when painting and drawing meet and blend. Drawing has always been and still is a very pure language and a way to communicate with myself. Drawing is the place where maps of my visual world are created. For a long time I didn’t want to exhibit drawings. They were too personal, intimate for me or I simply doubted them.
Your canvases have remarkable characteristics regarding the used material. You work with special pigments. Please describe the process to us.
I prepare my own mixtures of pigments, which I then mix with water-based glue to the desired density. It is a special technique that I have perfected and mastered over time. Thanks to the relatively lengthy preparation of the colors, it helped me to understand the colors and the relationships between the colors better from the beginning. The paintings have quite a lot of layers and planes. In the last layers, the surface of the canvas often appears as a smooth ceramic surface. The texture of the canvas completely disappears and the surface of the painting and its character give a specific impression. Recently, I have also started to use acrylic paints on some paintings. However, my technique of pigments and glue is so strongly connected to my work that it cannot be abandoned.
Installations always appear in your exhibitions. Why do you prefer to conceptualize your exhibitions using objects and different materials?
I think it is a kind of mental exercise outside of painting. For example, on sculptures I often work quickly and spontaneously. To a certain extent, it is the opposite of the process of building my paintings. It allows me a haptic experience that produces something between painting and drawing. Painting is sometimes very demanding. It always requires more and more attention. It is probably because painting can always offer me incredible other possibilities that I want to discover and experience. Intuitively, I want to lead the observer into a wider intimate environment in which he can hide, conceal himself and which does not only contain paintings but also various other references and hidden connections between paintings, drawings and the gallery space. I think that my sculptures often reflect the desire to create something regardless of the ambitions and intention of creating a work of art. I am happy when the viewer is surrounded by different approaches in an exhibition.
