David Černý: Rebellion
September 16, 2024
Street artist, engineer, architect, pilot, rebel, and provocateur are all words used to describe Czech artist David Černý, but the terms most akin to his nature are innovator and disruptor. Černý is widely recognized for his monumental sculptures in public spaces, which speak directly to everyday people and protest authority through satire and derision. All his works have a personal connection to the history of his country—the Czech Republic—and Europe broadly in the post-World War II era. His political views (anti-authoritarian, anti-Communist, and anti-censorship) are a product of his journey as a contemporary artist during a time when regressive ideologies have returned, wars continue to be waged, and societies are dehumanized by governments and economics.
Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1967, Černý grew up in an artistic family, his father being a painter, his mother an art restorer. His childhood was filled with going to art openings and museums. And yet, Černý has long rejected the idea of being an “artist,” embracing instead a path more akin to that of his grandfather, who was an inventor and officer in the army. Sharing his grandfather’s love of engineering, Černý was fascinated by how things worked, from building model airplanes to deconstructing toy trains. In high school, he studied theater and film and was accepted to the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, where he studied industrial design. Today, these skills allow him to create work that is as distinguished for its craftsmanship as for the adventurous themes he addresses.
The lingering effects of the 1968 Soviet invasion of his homeland ignited Černý’s impulse to rebel against a Communist government that repressed freedom of expression. This came to a head in May 1991, when the artist was arrested for painting a Soviet tank pink, transforming what was a war memorial honoring the 1945 liberation of Czechoslovakia by the Red Army into a giant pink “toy” that mocked Soviet oppressors. In 1996, he created Man Hanging Out, a depiction of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud hanging by one hand from a pole high above the ground. The uncomfortable piece was meant to question the role that intellectualism might play in the new millennium, while at the same time interpreting the hopelessness of modern times. King Wenceslas, a sculpture a king riding an upside-down horse, was unveiled at the Lucerna Palace in Prague in 1999. Protesting the ineptness of post-Cold War governments, Černý showed the king aiming to look heroic atop an expired mount, conveying his idea of a government in which, as he says, “Nothing works . . . but we all pretend it does.”
In the Crocker’s exhibition, the power of Černý’s political satire will be abundantly clear. Tower Babies [fig. 1] is a group of crawling infants made of fiberglass and steel that were installed in 2000 on the exterior of Prague's Žižkov Television Tower as part of the European Capital Culture year. They communicate the artist’s concern for the dehumanization of society, as he has replaced their faces with barcodes. Reflecting both the past and present, the barcodes reference the numbered tattoos forced upon Holocaust victims by the Nazis, the rise of the far-right in many countries, consumerism, and tattoos sported by many people today.
In 2013, Černý established himself as a true provocateur through his work Finger [fig. 3], a version of which is included in the exhibition. On the eve of the Czech general elections, he placed a 30-foot middle finger on a barge in the Vltava River in front of the presidential palace, an in-your-face message to President Miloš Zeman, a Communist sympathizer. “This finger is aimed straight at the castle politics,” Černý explains. “After 23 years, I am horrified at the prospect of the Communists returning to power and of Mr. Zeman helping them to do so.”
Černý’s resin and LED wall sculpture Albert Einstein [cover] depicts one of the world’s most renowned scientists and thinkers. In his portrait, Černý showcases gears, cogs, bones, and other items that denote the inner workings of brilliance within the seemingly translucent makeup of Einstein’s playful face. In creating this homage to a genius, Černý uses a proprietary technique in which three-dimensional objects float within a polymer resin as if seen via X-ray. What results is both solid and translucent, a process that Černý applied to other intellectuals, including Nikola Tesla and J. Robert Oppenheimer, whose visages are also included in the show, as well as to a human skull [fig. 4].
One of Černý’s most recent sculptures, Cock [fig. 5], is a monumental combination of a rooster and gun, an ode to masculine potency atop bird legs. The sculpture’s title can be interpreted three ways: the action one takes before
pulling a gun’s trigger, the male anatomy, and poultry, all of which are integrated into this symbol of dominance, power, and destruction. Free thinking, strong-willed, and eccentric, Černý continues to provoke and encourage contemplation in everything he creates, including in a recently unveiled, monumental sculpture entitled Věra for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, a piece honoring the late Czech gymnast and dissident Vera Čáslavská. Whether he is paying homage, assaulting politics, or creating whimsical metaphors of contemporary society, he aims to connect directly with the public, making works that are impossible to ignore, regardless of his target.
This exhibition was organized by the Centro Cultural Tijuana (CECUT), an institution of the Secretariat of Culture of the Government of Mexico, and made possible by HOHMANN, Inc.