Light Art on the Rise: Lumia Gallery Opens in Prague

For anyone nostalgic for the popular Signal festival or seeking to be immersed in artistic play with darkness and light, the newly opened Lumia Gallery in Prague’s Celetná Street is a must-visit.

The gallery replaces traditional wax mannequins with interactive projections, water simulations, and sensory tunnels.

Lumia Gallery has been open for over three months and was created by Filip Kočík, also known as Feex, a photographer, artist, and producer who had been considering opening the gallery for almost a decade.

He collaborated with Michal Škorpík, academic sculptor Jakub Chocholoušek, and lighting engineer and digital artist Ati Sphere on the project.

“I was doing new circus, and then I became interested in the possibility of combining acrobatics and dance with projections, so I started to develop it. There aren’t many schools for that, so you have to learn how to use all the tools yourself. The most important thing is to have a hacker mindset because the whole process of creating is based on a visual idea that you need to solve as a problem. You have to invent a completely new system to make it work,” explains Ati Sphere, who has created most of the works for the gallery, such as 3D projections, video mapping, or LED mapping.

Ati Sphere has had to learn to work with different technologies. The exhibition includes, among other things, sensors that are used for autonomous vehicles or robots.

At the moment, the artist sees interactivity in art as a fringe issue. “It certainly has potential, but its creators are probably not as interested in it as people who study painting at the Academy of Fine Arts,” he says.

Successful exhibitions such as eMotion, featuring works by Alfons Mucha, and Once Upon a Time, showcasing animated paintings by Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Auguste Renoir, have already hinted that not only interactive but digital art in general could be a hit with Czech visitors.

In the future, Ati Sphere would like to sell his original live art to collectors. “But it’s quite demanding technologically, and I still have to invent it because the artist has to manage such a work. I think there would be interest. For example, video art sells too,” he points out.

Lumia Gallery could potentially travel with its exhibitions in the future. It is open from Monday to Sunday, from 10 am to 8 pm.