David Černý, 38, is no stranger to controversy.

The Czech artist and sculptor has been turning heads in his native Prague for most of his career. Take 1991, for instance, the year he painted a Soviet tank installed in a public square a bright candy-pink.

Then, there are those oversized, faceless, crawling babies he sculpted and had installed on the Žižkov TV tower. He also parodied the city's landmark statue of St. Wenceslas at the top of the square that bears the same name. In Černý's version, which hangs in the Lucerna passage, the Czech patron saint rides an upside-down horse, straddling the animal's belly.

So it is perhaps no surprise that the artist greets the stir he has created in Poland with the shrug of a shoulder.

"I laughed," Černý says. "I don't care. It's not the first time I've received controversy."

The Polish art community is still talking about Černý's Shark, which was banned from an exhibition called "Shadows of Humor" in the town of Bielsko-Bia∏a last month.

Shark is a life-size sculpture of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein clad only in his underwear, trussed up in ropes and chains, his arms bound behind his body. The notorious dictator floats face down in a glass tank of greenish fluid.

"He said it was 'disturbing,' " says Hollister, who also edits the Prague-based arts magazine Umělec. "He did not think it was appropriate to show a work like that in a city-funded gallery."

The Polish official later contacted Černý to defend his actions, saying it didn't constitute censorship.

Černý, characteristically tongue-in-cheek, denies that he chose his subject in order to generate controversy.

"I chose [to sculpt] Saddam because he has an interesting body. That's it."

From humor to politics

Hollister is more apologetic about the affair. "I did not want to create [problems] in Bielsko-Bia∏a," he says. "I expected some controversy, but I did not expect the city hall to go this far. I want to create an international art show, not to change politics."

The real theme for the show was much more lighthearted, he says. "The guiding principle was humor. Everything in this show made me laugh."

Polish law makes offending someone's religion illegal, but Hussein is clearly not a religious icon, Hollister and Černý say.

Perhaps the controversy was to be expected, for the recent Polish episode isn't the first time this year Shark has been banned. It was scheduled to appear in Middelkerke, Belgium, in February, but was turned away by the town's mayor, who worried it could be offensive to Muslims.

The piece was moved instead to a gallery in a larger city nearby.

The Polish episode found a similar end. After Shark was cast out of Bielsko-Bia∏a, it was invited to another Polish gallery, in Cieszyn, where it is on exhibit — with the support of that town's mayor — until Oct. 8.

Something about Czech artists

Shark's stir isn't the only time this year that Czech artwork has offended Polish viewers, either.

In April, Superstart, a piece by Czech art group Kamera skura on exhibit in Wroc∏aw drew small demonstrations, Hollister says. The piece depicts a male gymnast with an uncanny resemblance to Jesus resting in a pose on the ring apparatus that mimics Christ's crucifixion.

In June, an installation by Czech art collective Guma guar created an uproar in Bytom, upper Silesia. Displayed was a digitally manipulated photo showing the pope holding up the severed head of British singer Elton John. Scrawled on the wall beside the photo, in Polish, the message: "You're all queers."

The owner of that gallery quickly removed the piece, and was recently questioned by police as part of a formal complaint process, Hollister says.

Despite all the controversy in Poland over the art of its neighbor to the south, Hollister is hesitant to paint Poland's art community as inherently more conservative than its Czech counterpart.