The strong presence of a woman in Villa Volman – her energy, touch, traces, emotions, tenderness and intimacy – meets Alžběta Jungrová's unique photographic project.
The exhibition Without End or Beginning presents a collection of works created over the past few years directly in the villa's interiors. Alžběta Jungrová takes an original approach to installation: her photographs are printed on various translucent materials and sensitively placed on reflective surfaces, transparencies and semi-transparent fabrics.
We want to draw you into a new world of ideas – a parallel history that never really existed, yet can live in our minds and add another layer to the genius loci of the house. Alžběta Jungrová's exhibition symbolically follows the original female imprint that stood at the very birth of the villa.
Villa Volman was built in 1939 as a dream home for Luďa Volmanová, daughter of Čelákovice industrialist Josef Volman. Together with her father, she commissioned the architects and helped shape the layout of the functionalist villa, in which architecture and art were intertwined from the very beginning. It was here that she wanted to raise her two young children and create a modern family home in the spirit of the new age.
But she was able to live her dream only very briefly. After 1948, the young family was forced to leave their home, hand it over to the state and go into exile. The villa lost its original female energy and family dimension and for decades became an institutional space – first a kindergarten, later a decaying ruin on the margins of public interest. In recent years, cultural and social life has been returning to the villa, and with it a new layer of contemporary art. Since 2025, artists from the Trafo Gallery circle have been helping to shape it.
Born on 18 April 1978 in Prague, Czech photographer Alžběta Jungrová is the daughter of journalist Terezie Kaslová and the great-granddaughter of writer, playwright and journalist Ferdinand Peroutka. She graduated from the Secondary School of Graphic Arts in Prague and became known as a photojournalist, capturing armed conflicts and the harsh conditions of developing countries. She has won several awards in the Czech Press Photo competition, and over the last ten years she has focused on independent work and long-term documentary series. Today she works mainly with emotions, how we perceive them and their importance in our lives. The central theme of her work is women. Without End or Beginning follows her two previous solo exhibitions, which she deliberately placed in non-gallery spaces – an abandoned part of Rajhrad Monastery and a laundry at the General University Hospital in Prague – working with the emotion of each place and its natural light to enhance the atmosphere of her photographs.
Trafo Gallery is a private exhibition space in the industrial setting of Hall 14, a former slaughterhouse at Prague's Holešovice Market. Since 2006, it has represented prominent artists, extending well beyond the generation of its founders. The gallery grew out of the former Trafačka in Prague's Vysočany, founded by Jan Kaláb, Jakub Nepraš, Michal Cimala and Blanka Čermáková, who still shape its exhibition programme together today. In collaboration with leading Czech curators (Otto M. Urban, Petr Vaňous, Radek Wohlmuth, Kristýna Jirátová, Tomáš Pospiszyl and others) and Czech and international artists, Trafo Gallery presents six exhibitions a year, each accompanied by an unconventional bilingual publication. The programme focuses on contemporary Czech and international art of the mid-career generation – painting, sculpture, intermedia installation, graffiti, photography, drawing and more. Alongside its Prague programme, the gallery takes part in international art fairs and occasionally exhibits outside its own premises. Regular guided tours, workshops, lectures, screenings and performances are also part of the programme.
