Plugged in to the big picture

Well-known in his own right but most recently in the spotlight for his collaboration with David Černý on Entropa, Krištof Kintera has an electrifying new show of his own at Galerie Jiří Švestka, featuring works from the past couple years. The show's title, "A Bigger Problem Than Yours," suggests there are far more terrible things happening around us than the scandals and squabbles of politicians or the quotidian travails that consume so much of our attention.

Most often, Kintera produces his sculptures by putting existing objects together in a new and unexpected way, combining social critique with irony and humor.

In this show, the glow of his first sculpture will have you quickly stripping off your winter coat. The towering My Light Is Your Life (Model Shiva Samurai 5 kW/50 Hz) is a haloed figure made from a wild variety of old lighting fixtures and light bulbs, topped with a warm-yellow light globe for a head that in turn is crowned with a fluorescent circular tube. A profusion of electric cords streams out from the radiant sculpture, which veritably hums with energy. It's not hard to imagine one blundering step bringing down this hulking angel of waste, which consumes a whopping 5 kilowatts per hour.

In the next room, a jumble of silvery, zinc-coated police barriers retrofitted with additional metal tubing resembles a herd of deer. Titled Paradise Now, the chaotic arrangement suggests deer in a battle or a mating dance during rutting season - or perhaps a deer orgy in progress.

Sidle past the blockade of deer to enter a narrow side room, from which a squawking tirade bursts forth at intervals. I See, I See, I See (2009) consists of a mechanical raven dressed in pants, a belt and shoes sitting on an overhead branch from which a little leather jacket hangs. The raven periodically kicks its dangling legs and utters phrases like "pay, pay, pay taxes" and "cr-cr-crisis," or banal advertising slogans. The bird, of course, is merely mimicking what it hears repeatedly from us and the media. Quoth the raven: "Crazy, crazy, crazy chaos."

The next room beyond the deer barriers contains nothing but a dented oil drum coated in 24-carat gold. A cool vapor rises from of one of the two openings on the top of the drum. Titled Holy Spirit Opened, it perhaps conveys a message about luxurious excess, wars fought in the name of religion or oil greed, a genie-in-a-bottle that once unleashed can't easily be put back in or contained.

In contrast to the gilded oil drum, the next room contains a sculpture titled All My Bad Thoughts (2009). A slick puddle of polyurethane that looks like an oil spill enrobes a huddled human form, with only the top of its dreadlocked head emerging from beneath a blanket. The resinous material appears to have been poured over the figure and then left to harden in layers over time, like sediment. It ranges in color from brownish-black to orange-black, like oil and blood mixed together, and the figure seems to have been trapped like a fly in amber.

In the last room of the show is an oversize sculpture titled My Light Is Your Light (2008) - a huge chandelier illuminated by eight old streetlights and literally wedged into the gallery space at an angle, looking something like an octopus ride at an amusement park. This piece creates a sense that the ceiling has come crashing down.

Leaving the show, you realize the high-wattage angel is not the only source of the hum in the first space. A buzzing and periodic soft thumping sound is emanating from an overturned, paint-spattered green plastic bucket, like a trapped bee bouncing around inside trying to break free. This low-key, low-polish piece has the same title as the show itself, and the futile attempts of the trapped insect to escape its predicament - or will it succumb to its fate and stop trying? - is at the crux of the show.

Kintera, 36, tackles serious issues with humor and style. These new sculptures and objects are accessible, comprehensible and authentic - and not to be missed.

Mimi Fronczak Rogers can be reached at
Features@praguepost.com