In her photographs, films, and installations, Aglaia Konrad turns her attention, frequently and with great intensity, to architecture, the urban environment, or even space as such. During the shooting of architecture, urban space, and infrastructure, she refined her visual perception of all the inseparable individual components by necessity linked to designing, construction, but also to demolition and building anew. In recent years, she has become interested in the relation between destruction (buildings of the postwar period or entire urban districts) and reconstruction, or the new buildings arising on the same site. Her attention is concentrated on the processes often termed “retroactive building” (Rückbau), viewing “demolition as an unavoidable aspect of progress.” Rückbau, as a sculptural process, is an approach through which the artist understands demolition as an expansion of architectural practice and one where she involves physical building waste as a sculptural gesture in relation to the image. And in the term mentioned above, “Rückbaukristalle,” we see combined both demolition or destruction, and equally growth (crystals organically growing, reorganizing themselves). For her Prague exhibition, Aglaia Konrad has prepared an installation compiled out of fragments – architectonic elements of facades, structures, or fittings – from demolished buildings that she has collected in her travels around Brussels. Supplementing this installation is a series of photographs. Aglaia Konrad (*1960, Salzburg) is a photographer originally from Austria, currently living in Brussels, where she also teaches at the art academy LUCA School of Arts, Brussels. Recently, she has exhibited, e.g., at CIVA, Brussels (2024); Mu.ZEE Oostende (2023–2024); Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal (2023–2024); Austrian Cultural Forum, Warsaw (2023); Künstlerhaus, Vienna (2023). She has also published several artist’s books, such as Japan Works (2021), Schaubuch: Skulptur (2017), Aglaia Konrad from A to K (2016), Desert Cities (2008), or Elasticity (2002). Currently, Aglaia Konrad is participating in the Triennale SEFO 2024: Monuments in the Museum of Art in Olomouc. In 2023, she was awarded the Austrian State Prize for Photography (Österreichischer Staatspreis für Fotografie). www.aglaiakonrad.com