Art: GASK gallery pays tribute to Miroslav Tichý

Within six weeks of Miroslav Tichý's death in April at the age of 84, GASK - the Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region - had opened an exhibition to commemorate the life and work of the eccentric Czech photographer. The centerpiece of the show is a room-sized sculpture by Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto, titled Blue Mist Gray Girls, which pays fitting tribute to a singular artist who lived on the margins of society, gazing in through the lens of his camera.

Neto, born in 1964 in Rio de Janeiro, has been a longtime admirer of Tichý's dreamlike photographs of women and girls, whom he would photograph, often unawares, at the local swimming pool or going about their daily business. His monumental sculpture brings together Tichý's two obsessions - photography and women - and creates an intimate space separated from the outside by a translucent barrier.

Viewers enter the sculpture through an archway, like a pair of bowed legs, for an intimate encounter with Tichý's work. The ambiguously organic sculpture is constructed from nylon - an outer purple layer and an inner beige layer - stretched over a framework of wooden pieces that look like bones from a snap-together wood model kit. From the outside, the nylon fabric almost completely obscures the images by Tichý within. From the inside, everything outside the cozy confines is cast in an ethereal haze, like the women in many of Tichý's photographs.

Hanging down into the interior of the space is a scrotum-like nylon sack filled about halfway up with tiny plastic balls. They support a circular piece of wood that acts as a pedestal for one of Tichý's cameras. It is not one of his legendary homemade contraptions but a battered Focus Free AP-201 instamatic. The shrouded view of the camera through the nylon fabric brings to mind some of Tichý's enigmatic shots.

Apart from the clear reference to the masculine potency of his camera, the installation is otherwise rife with feminine allusions. Numerous tunnels connecting the outer and inner nylon membranes evoke vaginas but also camera lenses. They offer unadulterated, if skewed, views between the inside and outside of the sculpture, little glimpses of clarity amid the misty haze.

The expanses of fabric are stitched together with seams, like those on old-fashioned silk stockings. The gateway and the openings at the top are trimmed with lace, giving the impression of stepping under the skirt of a giantess and then looking up into her vagina, but also gazing up at a vaulted cathedral ceiling - perhaps alluding to the reverence Tichý held for his primary subject matter.

Supported by the "vertebrae" of the framework are seven of Tichý's images, printed on wooden mounts: girls in swimsuits, girls giggling together, smiling women waiting for a bus, women at the town swimming pool. One photo is just vaguely readable as a female form.

The uniformity and pristine quality of the prints in this installation are at odds with the way Tichý himself produced his images - out of focus, under- or overexposed and haphazardly printed. He treated the finished prints indifferently, but sometimes lovingly decorated them with hand-drawn borders. The photos on their wooden "easels" call to mind large-format cameras, giving the impression of looking through the viewfinder and seeing what Tichý saw (though Tichý didn't use large-format cameras).

Despite the poor quality of many of Tichý's images, he was not an unschooled naif: He went through formal art training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague after World War II, studying painting. He then returned to his native Kyjov, where his nonconformist lifestyle vexed the authorities and landed him in psychiatric institutions several times. Although he didn't pursue a career as an artist, he passionately made photographs for several decades, and then rose from obscurity to international acclaim almost overnight.

In addition to the photos inside Neto's installation taken by Tichý, there is also an exceptional set of portraits taken of Tichý by Petr Kozánek, a Charter 77 signatory, Civic Forum spokesman and post-November parliamentarian who is also from Kyjov. Kozánek shot these portraits in the 1970s and '80s, showing Tichý in a disintegrating sweater, looking mistrustfully into the camera, or in a ragged coat squinting at or squarely confronting the camera. In one fantastic shot, he is reading a staple-bound document and his eyes totally disappear behind his glasses because of the reflection of the light.

A slideshow-style video by the Swiss-born artist Annelies Štrba from 2006 playing in the next room presents a parade of Tichý's images to the accompaniment of somber piano music. There are also two portraits of Tichý that she took at his home in Kyjov. The show is an appropriately idiosyncratic homage to a remarkable artist.

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