Creatures of the night

Czech curator Václav Magid tackles some heady topics in the new show at Futura, which was inspired by the French Romantic poet Aloysius Bertrand (1807-41). His "Gaspard of the Night" was a prose poem that later influenced icons of the 19th-century French Decadent movement, such as Huysmans, and Romantics like Baudelaire, who remain among the most splendid conjurers of darkness, fantasy, terror, death and evil, with a romantic yet cynical artistic sensibility.

Magid selected 11 contemporary Czech artists to explore this territory: Daniela Baráčková, Jiří David, Marek Meduna, Markéta Othová, Michal Pěchouček, Jiří Skála, Sláva Sobotovičová, Pavel Sterec, Ivan Svoboda, Jan Šerých and Roman Štětina. Their work ranges across a wide variety of genres, from photography and video to sculpture, drawing and sound installation, including radio pranks.

The show is generally monochromatic - lots of black, white and shades of gray, best embodied by the photographer Markéta Othová in her singular photo at the entrance to the show. Art Institute (2006) is a shot of a pterodactyl suspended from the ceiling of a natural history museum, with a dinosaur triptych in the background, posing the question, how can the God of the Bible exist?

The mysterious power of the night to induce anxieties and fears (especially of death), and influence fantasies, dreams and inhibitions, is the dominant theme in other works, perhaps best exemplified in the creepy sculpture by Marek Meduna titled L (2010). Meduna's creature is only waist-high, yet it seems like a towering menace, especially in contrast to the color reproduction of a harmless monkey acting as its shadow.

One room could be referred to as the room of dreams and nightmares, dominated by more caricatures. Here, Daniela Baráčková displays 13 texts of dreams (in Czech only) contributed by fellow artists. Accompanying the texts are caricatures of the artists in their dreams, made by Václav Magid. Baráčková's own dream of being seduced under seamy conditions by a nude Mirek Topolánek is a highlight.

The intriguing film I Have Met the Same Child Twice (2010) by Ivan Svoboda is something like a dream. It features a male narrator sitting, standing and sometimes smoking, recalling how he twice passed a genius toddler while walking alone in a snowy forest. His story is also projected in a background video recreating the meetings and the mystical dialogue he had with the child.

Another mystifying video, Fischli & Weiss (2010) by Sláva Sobotovičová, shows children and their parents watching a performance. Exactly what they are watching is never revealed, though the kids seem to be more captivated than the adults. No one laughs or smiles very much. Weird noises play in the background, almost like a distorted and garbled horror film soundtrack.

The centerpiece of the exhibition, Nocturne (2009-2010) by Roman Štětina, is in the gallery's main video room. There is no video projection, except for English translations of the ongoing audio, snippets from late-night talk radio programs: "Marketplace," in which callers offer items for auction; "Nightline," with a radio psychologist; and "Telefonoteka," a music show featuring a Czech opera singer.

In each broadcast, a strange caller disrupts the host's program with, for instance, inappropriate personal longings, or ominous promises to commit suicide on the spot. These calls were all staged by the artist using radio actors.

The effect can be chilling. At one point, an anonymous male caller says to the host and the singer, Martina Janková, "A person has a spring voice and a summer voice, an autumn voice and two winter voices - warm and cold. They have a main voice and a secondary voice. A blossomed-out voice and resurrected voice. A cracked voice and a pasted voice. A frozen voice. A woman has a male voice, and a man has a female voice. And all of these voices rustle with the voice of the executioner and the chirping voice of a prostitute, and under all of this is the tender voice of a child. And the voice of those they have hurt and those that they have loved. A person has all of these voices at once."

The women are left flabbergasted. They never quite recover, going into a tailspin of blabbering countercharges that only compound the heaviness of the situation. Intended or not, it's quite a performance.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at
features@praguepost.com