Cashing in on collectibles

Since the early 1990s, hip fashion and art districts in parts of the Western world have been combining galleries with shops selling artist-designed collectibles. This trend has finally reached the Czech and Slovak art scenes.

"Kotec & Friends" presents a selection of pieces produced by the Kotec Association (and  friends), which does "design with overlap" - artist-designed pieces that may or may not be useful. The group, which had its origins in the Department of Art and Design at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, currently numbers around a dozen contributors.

The sales pitch starts at the entrance to the exhibition, where a chandelier made of bicycle tubes and a few hanging crystals with white Christmas lights hangs over a stack of black crates filled with artsy oddities for sale - and at reasonable prices! There are lollipops, crystal snow globes containing toys and creatures, designer tea sets and utterly silly plastic eyeglasses. There are also artistic photographs on magnets - ideal for refrigerators - and self-promoting Kotec buttons in stark black and white.

A porcelain Chihuahua (in glossy white and flat pink) would make a nice centerpiece, or you can choose from other fine porcelain pieces. At first glance, one looks like a woman's nude torso - though on closer inspection, it turns out to be a spa cup in the shape of a croaking frog. A fashionable way to take the cure on your next spa visit, these cups, by Lenka Mališka, sell for 670 Kč.

The rest of the gallery is devoted to 11 young Slovak painters from the studio of Professor Ivan Csudai at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. Heavily influenced by the hottest trends in painting, such as the highly regarded Leipzig and Dresden schools, these painters represent the best from a larger exhibition, "11.1," held in Bratislava in February. The show includes several works by Csudai (he is the "1" in "11.1"), as well as works created collaboratively by Csudai and, for example, his former student Erik Šille.

In the top floor of the gallery, a standout is Dávid Baffi's Round Clouds (2006), a burst of color with soft globs of light, aqua and royal blues, and white pierced by sharp red streaks.

Beside this is Juliana Mrvová's Places We Live In-I (2008), a skeletal frame imposed on a white interior. The details of the objects are indecipherable, but basically this is a domestic ruin under a glaring white light. Mrvová has another standout piece in the cellar space, titled Scarlet Form (2007). It's part-flame, part-cave, done in burning red with a gaping hole in the center, like a mouth. With a little imagination, you might alternatively see a monster with horns and possibly a tail, or a ghost dog shaking off blood.

On the ground floor, there is another work by Baffi, Color Brains 1 (2006), an assault in orange and mustard yellow with light greens and blues with slashes of red. It offers a fresh take on color on a larger-than-average canvas. Next to this is Michal Černušák's Labor Land (2008), recalling works from the Leipzig School led by Neo Rauch and imagery from the lowbrow art scene in the United States, but with a local element - Slovak history incorporated into the storyline.

Černušák's painted story goes something like this: A fireman (possibly) with a hose (from the 1950s) douses a schoolroom of university scholars from earlier in the century (young men in suits with neatly combed hair). These two worlds dominate the lower section of the canvas. Divided by white-capped mountain peaks in a haze, the upper section of the canvas has a fiery landscape with lightning bolts and claws with pink rain falling on a blood-dripped landscape. This merges into a land of nightmares, with demonic dogs, loose intestines, skulls and crossbones and assorted aliens converging in a futuristic setting. The bloody heavens connect to the bloody earth, flowing like lava at the bottom of the canvas.

The combination of these two worlds - contemporary Slovak painting and Czech "free art" design - signifies a step by the new generation of local artists to follow successful trends. Since cute and freaky designs sell so well internationally, why not finally join in on the fun? And practically all of the individualistic young painters from the 11.1 group deserve more opportunities to break from the pack.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at
features@praguepost.com