Next stop, Muzeum

Cryptic 257, Masker, Pasta, Point, Skarf and Tron - even if you don't know these names, you have most likely seen their work in Prague. They are the best-known Czech street artists, whose tags and murals have been part of Prague's urban visual landscape for the past 15 years.

With the show "Metropolis," DOX Center for Contemporary Art joins the wave of art galleries and museums around the world that are not only legitimizing street art but helping to institutionalize the subculture. Before "Metropolis" went on view at DOX, a slightly different version of the exhibition was part of the Czech Pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai. These six artists were among the select few chosen to represent Czech culture to the world under the pavilion's theme "Fruits of Civilization" - creating the odd phenomenon of state-sponsored street art.

This group of six represents the first wave of local street artists. Ranging in age from 28 to 33, most of them have trained at one of the country's art academies - and had run-ins with the police. As is the trend these days, their street credentials have earned them the privilege of being invited indoors.

In addition to their showing in Shanghai and DOX and at festivals dedicated to street art - most notably NAMES in 2008 - the artists collectively have to their credit such ventures as publishing 'zines, painting the ceiling of a Baroque castle, organizing festivals, hosting a radio show about the Czech graffiti scene, designing clothes and websites, directing music videos, and much more.

The move to capture and commercialize street art's vitality goes back to New York street artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat in the 1980s, and has recently undergone a resurgence, with major auction houses having sales devoted to urban art and art collectors snapping up works by the British street artist Banksy and others for stratospheric prices.

As with most institutional exhibitions of street art, the work of these Czech artists has far less vitality indoors than it does in the urban environment. Graffiti doesn't translate well to a gallery format, so for "Metropolis" each has contributed an installation, mostly sculptural, with elements of street style to make a unified environment which recreates a Prague metro station - the Muzeum stop - with self-conscious irony.

Pasta, who is best known around Prague for pasting up screen prints, stickers, posters with texts and "subvertising," has built an installation of a doughnut shop decorated with flashy neon and slightly subversive slogans and a display case filled with dollar bills instead of doughnuts.

Tron's bold graphic style has been employed here in a three-dimensional urban nightscape of skyscrapers forming the letters TRON and with the text "invisible future forever" painted in the style of marquee lights.

Cryptic 257 has installed one of the "Graffomat" vending machines he makes, which sell masks and cans of spray paint - labeled "Use for vandalism only" - instead of candy bars or cold beverages. This Graffomat machine also appeared in Shanghai, putting the Czech government in the funny position of implicitly supporting Cryptic 257's actions. Under his previous nom de rue of Epos 257, the artist used a paintball gun to make drive-by Pointillist-style paintings on empty billboards. His billboard work was among the urban art to be highlighted in the Zvon Biennial of Young Art this past summer.

Point has contributed an installation of prefab apartment buildings penetrated and connected by glowing orange balloon-like tubes.

Masker is showing a three-story prefab apartment building with a view of the inhabitants inside. Under his real name, Jakub Matuška, Masker was selected as one of the finalists for the annual Jindřich Chalupecký Award for artists under 35. The finalists' exhibition, which ran through mid-January upstairs at DOX, featured a similar apartment building and condensed versions of the artist's more expansive street art style on canvas.

Graffiti-style tags present throughout the exhibition have a decorative, mood-setting function. The in-situ spraying here shows none of the flair these artists are known for on the street and almost seems a parody of street art (DOX also invited them write on the outside walls of the gallery, which provides a more suitable "canvas" for their talents).

Like prominent street artists elsewhere, Cryptic 257, Masker, Pasta, Point, Skarf and Tron are increasingly more likely to be encountered in a gallery than on a building wall these days. While their younger followers will keep the streets alive with art, the founding crew of Czech street artists is gradually moving off the streets.

The most captivating thing about good street art is its element of surprise, the way it unexpectedly enlivens urban space with visual commentary on contemporary city life. When any cultural phenomenon starts to move from a marginalized subculture to mainstream culture, it inevitably spells the beginning of the end of its authentic energy. Hardcore street writers in the Czech Republic may have disdain for the move indoors by Cryptic 257, Masker, Pasta, Point, Skarf and Tron. Or perhaps they look forward to joining them in the future.

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