The Prague Post
December 5th, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    star Gift Subscriptions
Hotel Prague Centre

Home » Archives » Night & Day

Rated R

At a sexually explicit show, artists gone wild
Gallery Review | Search restaurants | Archives

By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
May 21st, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
An artwork in itself: The gallery's new facade advertising the exhibition.
enlarge
Sexism?


at Galerie Václava Špály Ends June 15. Národní 30, Prague 1-New Town. Open Tues.-Fri. noon-8 p.m.; on Thursdays the gallery is open till 10 p.m. and admission is free 6-10 p.m.
For its latest exhibition, Galerie Václava Špály has redecorated its windows to make the Národní street establishment resemble a sex shop, or even a brothel. So it’s not surprising that the gallery is currently attracting a greater variety of visitors, and in greater numbers, than usual.
Curated by Pavel Humhal, “Sexism?” features 12 artists. Works by Andy Warhol and Paris-based American photographer and filmmaker Roy Stuart are joined by those of artists from the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria and Germany.
The first room of the gallery cleverly makes good on the sexual promise seen from the sidewalk. Five black booths, like sex-shop video cabins, are placed throughout the room, with artist identifications hardly noticeable in the darkened space. These booths do indeed contain videos, and all but one of them is playing behind closed curtains for good reason.
Franz Kapfer’s video Pressure on the Balls (Vienna, 1999) shows a naked man with a leaden black penis strapped around his waist like a jockstrap. Petra Pětiletá’s untitled video from 2007 shows a gathering of young naked males, all in sexual action. It could be the artist’s secret garden of delights, but it’s clear that the men in her video would have no interest in her. Marek Thér’s Oliver Keilmeyer, Swiss Curator, 1, 2 (2005) is also a male-on-male sex scene, but a much rawer production.
Only Veronika Drahotová’s Power of Love resembles a standard art video. It features the artist dressed as a Geisha and eating raw beef, her plate of meat resting on the back of a nude man who is serving as her dining table.
Warhol’s 1971 film Women in Revolt (made with Paul Morrissey) pokes good fun at the women’s liberation movement. Starring three drag queens (including Candy Darling), it is over the top in its bad acting, funny if banal dialogue and disturbing sex scenes.
In the gallery’s back room, Ondřej Brody’s Carpe Diem Picture (2008) is an amateur sex video portraying Miroslav Kopecký living his life by the philosophy of carpe diem — and profiting from what he enjoys. The corpulent Kopecký loves having sex, and his longtime girlfriend agrees (though they are both married to others). Kopecký, born in 1947, openly reveals his age and identity, and also that he makes money on the side as a model for porno magazines.
Downstairs, Katarzyna Kozyra (from Poland) dominates the space. In one wall projection, she is seen walking her two “dogs” (men in dog suits) through the halls of a regal palace and into a garden with erotic statues. There the dogs run loose, doing what dogs do, including peeing on the benches, humping each other and making attempts to do the same to their mistress — all in good fun. In another piece by Kozyra, Spears, Ragazzi, Stairs (2006), a tribe of young boys stand or sit naked with “vaginas” attached over their genitals, then play around, posing with spears in various positions of action/inaction.
Upstairs, Roy Stuart’s The Lost Door (2007) is a 120-minute film with narrative complexity, a strong script and professional acting, making it more suited for a cinema than an art gallery. There are numerous seductions and scenes of orgies, institutional rape, perverted domestic abuse and even murder, all played out in a lush atmosphere. It is not porn: Stuart’s scenes serve a purpose, placed in a context of sequences and flashbacks, with intelligent dialogue and a good soundtrack. It can also be enjoyed in shorter viewing segments.
Stuart, born in New York City but based in Paris, has just had a monograph of his erotic photographs published by Taschen. But filmmaking appears to be his calling these days, and, unlike Warhol’s tedious films, Stuart’s is worth repeated viewing.
On the same floor, there are some fashion newsprint collages by Elke Kryštůfek and photos by Lenka Klodová from her courageous sexual diary series Ženin (Woman’s), but these works hardly compete with the videos. At the end of the show, Corinna Schnitt’s video About a World (2007), showing a middle-aged man coming across a bevy of unconscious, young nude women on a grassy hillside, is something of a philosophical treatise.
An art show dedicated to sexism, sexual exploitation and dominance in sex was long overdue for Prague, which, after all, is considered among the top sex capitals of Europe. Seeing as Western-style feminism is generally ridiculed here and sexism still rules, it isn’t surprising that these topics haven’t been thoroughly explored in art shows.
Exhibitions with similarly provocative themes are common trade in Berlin or Vienna, and, viewed in this light, Prague’s art scene seems to have come of age. Still, the gallery warns visitors that this exhibit is not suitable for persons under the age of 18. The Czech Republic is certainly not a prudish nation, but, while this show is not necessarily a den of smut, it isn’t the tunnel of love, either.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (21/05/2008):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Reader's comments:

add your comment
[17:31 23/05/2008] : All I can say is - God help the Czech Republic and its people.
What a new low this has reached. Can you not see the depravity of this? Are we not close to the Roman Empire in its final days?
When my children are in Prague, I will make sure they do not walk down this street. How is one supposed to raise moral children in this Satanic culture?
Is it any wonder that Islamic fanatics hate the West?
Brian Hurta
Houston, TX
[07:33 26/05/2008] : If Mr. Alexander had read my entire comment, he would perhaps had noticed that I am not a Czech emigrant but a native born American of Czech parentage. As far as Al Jazeera is concerned it is apparent that he does not observe it with anything but a myopic view. While on a Nile cruise last year my wife and I had a choice of two English-speaking stations, one not very interesting and the other Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera was indeed interesting but it did not take a brain surgeon to decipher its anti-American message and propaganda. Perhaps a refresher course in English would help Mr. Alexander better understand what is going on in the real world, not in his world of wishful thinking. Also, Mr. Hurta's reference to the "Roman Empire in its final days" is hardly analagous to detaining someone for 20 minutes with no loss of human freedom.
Joseph Anton Skala
Eatons Neck, NY, USA
[21:30 05/06/2008] : Mr. Skala, I believe you are commenting on a different article. My comments were regarding the above - "At a sexually explicit show, artists gone wild."

Brian Hurta
Houston, TX
Note: Comments that include profanity, personal attacks or any other inappropriate material are prohibited.  

Add your comment


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Provokator
Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.