Why does Théodore Géricault’s famous painting The Raft of the Medusa continue to inspire contemporary artists even centuries after its creation? And how does it relate to today’s world? Otto M. Urban will host a discussion with artists John Beard, Martin Gerboc, and Wolfe von Lenkiewicz, whose work is featured in the current exhibition Argus & Medusa. The programme includes admission to the exhibition.

John Beard is an Australian artist of Welsh descent who has long been active in Great Britain, Australia, and Europe. His work focuses primarily on portraiture, landscape, and the relationship between the image, memory and vision. His paintings are often based on a specific model, which he transforms into a blurred, almost ghostly form through repeated overpainting, layering, and wiping. Rather than a precise record, he is interested in the moment when the image begins to disappear, reveal itself, or transform into an indistinct vestige. His work has been exhibited at institutions such as Tate St Ives, Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian in Lisbon, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 2006 he won the Wynne Prize for landscape painting, and in 2007 the Archibald Prize for portraiture. His work is currently featured in the exhibition Argus & Medusa at DOX.

Martin Gerboc is a painter and writer. His paintings are often exhibited within the context of contemporary European and world art. He made his literary debut in 1998 with the book of philosophical essays Myslením ku kríze. Nihilizmus je pragmatizmus (Thinking Our Way to a Crisis: Nihilism Is Pragmatism), which was followed by five more books of philosophical essays, miscellaneous writings, and texts on contemporary painting. In 2020 he published his first collection of poetry, Nezvratné básne (Irreversible Poems), followed by another collection titled Tance traumatu & marnosti (Dances of Trauma & Vanity) in 2026. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (VŠVU), at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania in the US, and at the Kolding School of Design in Denmark. He completed his doctoral studies at VŠVU and taught for several years at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he also earned his habilitation. He has also filmed several music videos for goth and punk bands, and he has curated a number of exhibitions of contemporary painting in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Wolfe von Lenkiewicz is a British artist with German and Polish roots. He comes from a family of painters. He studied philosophy the University of York and established himself as an artist in the early 2000s. His work draws on familiar motifs from art history as well as contemporary visual culture, which he transforms into new, ambiguous compositions. He employs citation, appropriation, and juxtaposition, referencing mythology and iconic works by Albrecht Dürer, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Théodore Géricault, Hieronymus Bosch, and others. In recent years he has combined classical oil painting with digital techniques and visual models based on artificial intelligence, without abandoning his emphasis on the craft of painting. His works have been exhibited at institutions such as the Musée du quai Branly in Paris, the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki, the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille. His work is currently featured in the exhibition Argus & Medusa at DOX.

Otto M. Urban is a curator and art historian. His main professional interest lies in Czech and international art of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. He has lectured on the history of Czech modern art at various academic institutions in the Czech Republic and abroad. From 2012 to 2016 he headed the Department of Theory and History of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. From 2017 he was the curator and later the director of the Collection of Nineteenth-Century Art and Classical Modernism at the National Gallery Prague. He has written a number of books and monographs and curated many group and solo exhibitions. He has been the chief curator of the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art since 2020.