Portraiture in the age of MyFace

Portraits have taken on a new dimension in the age of Facebook, so where do contemporary artists who are working in portraiture go from here? "Ego: Portrait x Photography" at Langhans Gallery brings together 31 artists working in the Czech Republic who are keen on photographing others and themselves. The show includes works by a few elder artists, a few who are lesser known in the medium, and many whose images are unsurpassable.

Vladimír Boudník (1924-68) was an outsider, and he is the odd man out in this show. Better known for his abstract, industrial graphics made in the postwar era, his self-portrait Me Personally (1950) is small and fragile, a dark black-and-white shot of a naked man poised on a carpet. Another one by Boudník, This Is My Death Mask (1950), is a profile shot of the artist wearing a mask with a black hood and an obscured background, seemingly aiming to capture his own death on film.

Three works from the early 1990s by Václav Stratil (born in 1950) are standouts. In his series "Monastic Patient" (1992), Stratil poses like Madonna, eyes closed and straddling a crucifix. In another photo, he's wearing a keffiyeh (a headdress worn by Arab men) with paper clips over his eyes and a crucifix balanced on his head. Elsewhere he wears a World War I-era helmet and sunglasses, holding a knife in one hand and a crucifix in the other. A dog's tail is stuck in his mouth, and he has similar fur on his chest.

What causes artists to pose in such extreme situations? Most likely it is a combination of self-expression and ego - the self, as distinct from the world and others. That is precisely what this show endeavors to examine.

Jano Pavlík (1963-88), from Slovakia, is one of the more obscure artists in the show. Part of the early 1980s Prague scene centered around FAMU (the Film and Photography School of Academy of Performing Arts), he was also close to the Slovak New Wave, which included Tono Stano, Vasil Stanko and others. Pavlík's untitled shots from 1987, just one year before his suicide, consist of rows of pictures of the artist looking debauched, with wild hair and a glare that spells trouble. The prints are scratched, lines are drawn on the artist's body, and poetic texts, such as "giving it all" surround the photos.

There are also photos from Pavlík's long-running "Ernest and Alicia" series. In Ernest With a Large Number of Cigarettes (1985), the male subject has cigarettes stuck in every facial orifice. In Alicia Has a Bad Dream (1985), a topless woman with scratches drawn on her chest screams in pain or pleasure.

There are also many lighter, refreshing works by younger artists in the show, including Jan Bigas (born in 1986), Johana Pošová (born in 1985), Radeq Brousil (born in 1980), Jiří Thýn (born in 1977) and Petra Steinerová (born in 1980). Bigas, Pošová, Brousil and Thýn are best at capturing night-clubbers, fellow artists and other hipsters, one even with his front teeth knocked out; while Steinerová's more intimate series "Dad" (2005-08) shows a middle-aged blonde transsexual looking worn out from too much drinking and smoking.

There are also some surprises: An installation in the gallery's cellar by Richard Loskot (born in 1984) and Karel Prát (born in 1978) titled "You Are There" (2010) has about 50 tiny photos - portraits and assorted patterns - set to a slow and random flicker in the dark like twinkling, fading stars.

Adam Holý's "Crossfield" series (2004), nine large portraits of children with Down syndrome, could be misunderstood: Each child is portrayed in a whirl of colorful, liquid bubbles, giving them a neo-psychedelic look, but one may wonder about the artist's intention.

And there are some shockers, including images of screaming figures - eerie faces coming out of darkness - from the 2004 "Nightmare" series by Lukáš Prokůpek (born in 1977), and the mysterious Zein (year of birth not provided), with untitled works from 2010 that are disturbing portrayals of utter human terror. Parents with small children should be warned in advance about this particular room. In this same room, however, Prokůpek also shows a captivating video of a fuzzy gray screen with a seated male body, barely visible, who either looks upward or faces the viewer until he lets his head droop and disappears.

According to the curators, Robert V. Novák and Pavel Turek, the challenge in contemporary portraiture is that "we all know how we are supposed to look." On that note, almost all of the Czech and Slovak artists in this show from the past 50 years mainly capture themselves or others at the age when they are trying hard to look their best for posterity. Most of the models pull this off admirably, despite their inherent narcissism - some look good, and some look wicked. What it all comes down to is that most photographers cannot subsist without the human face, and many find it hard to resist putting their own face in the picture.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at
features@praguepost.com