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The many faces of Mickey

Nikl offers a portrait of the artist as a mouse-masked clown
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By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
February 21st, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
A series of makeovers offer fresh perspectives on a familiar entertainment icon.
Petr Nikl is an enigmatic multimedia artist, a post-revolutionary renaissance man best known for his phantasmagorical theatrical art performances and the relics of those shows — homemade puppets and micro-sculptures, for lack of a better term — as well as otherworldly photographs. His show at Galerie České pojišťovny presents another aspect of his intriguing oeuvre: painting.
Nikl’s seven large canvases are presented as an extension of his most recent musical project. In autumn 2006 Nikl recorded the album Přesletec, with songs that he wrote and performed (singing and playing guitar) with Blanka Laurychová and Lakomé Barky, a choir of mothers and their daughters from the central Bohemian town of Klecany, as well as a long list of guest artists, including the jazzman František Kop and the veteran New Age duo of Irena and Vojtěch Havel. The instruments on Přesletec range from the African djembe and the didgeridoo to a bicycle “played” by Nikl.
Přesletec doesn’t really translate as anything — its meaning is unusual or even nonsensical in Czech. It literally means over-flyer, or someone who is over someone else who is flying. In Nikl’s exhibition, the Přesletec could well be Mr. George, an alien with a huge conehead who is featured in two portraits. These paintings in gray, off-white and black are curiously eerie, though the solemn-looking Mr. George appears hapless enough.
The CD art for Přesletec shows a picture of someone (easily imagined to be the artist) wearing a Mickey Mouse mask with wild orange hair instead of the famous mouse ears. In the exhibition, Mickey Mouse appears in four paintings — but this time he has more of a clown face.
Petr Nikl: Joy

at Galerie České pojišťovny Ends Feb. 25. Spálená 14, Prague 1–New Town. Open daily 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

There is one painting of Mickey with the wild orange wig and another without any hair (or ears) at all. The latter portrays Mickey with an unusual rectangular head, in effect deformed. There is also a Mickey portrait with a red ball-of-fire hairdo, and one immersed in orange (no hair, just a red speck on top of his brow). As with the portraits of Mr. George, there is an eeriness about them, and a not-surprising ironic expression playing across Mickey’s usually happy mask.
On the gallery wall is a lyrical text (in Czech) titled Clown II, which is a follow-up or extension of “Clown I,” the sad, recurring theme song on Přesletec. And so Nikl’s Mickey Mouse theme implies that the world’s most famous cartoon-mouse is also, or perhaps nothing but, another clown.
The small room at the back of the gallery displays an isolated painting that perhaps best captures the spirit of “Joy.” It shows a glum-looking young girl sticking out her tongue — a very long tongue that reaches down to the floor. She brings a humorous edge to the exhibit that the painted Mickey Mice certainly lack. By her placement in relation to the other paintings, she also has the last laugh.
Přesletec is a two-CD package released by the alternative music label Black Point, and overall it is a commendable effort by an artist performing the most unusual blues — not in musical style, but in feeling. It has energetic bursts and lots of upbeat sections, though there is a raw melancholy that pervades it all, underlying the happy-faced mask of the performer.
This is Nikl’s second release on Black Point. His 2004 debut recording won an Anděl award in the alternative music category. He is also an award-winning author and illustrator of several children’s fairy tales, and some of these titles are for sale at the gallery. Two of Nikl’s books (from the Smíchov-based Meander Press) are also available in English-language editions, though unfortunately not at the gallery.
Nikl’s beautifully illustrated fairy tales and his strong repertoire of music, theater and performance aimed at both adults and children make him a unique artist, and not only on the Czech scene. His paintings from the “Joy” series show yet another aspect of his enigmatic multiple personalities.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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