Certain art for times of uncertainty

Tarot card readings and cell phone text messages have very little in common.

Or didn't, until recently.

Among seven artists now part of the "No Reply Necessary" exhibition at the newly opened Galerie Vernon City, is Darina Alster, who seeks "to connect new media with really archaic ones."

Her project includes a video screen broadcasting the looping message: "Write your question via SMS to the following number: 420 775 246 349." A related computer program randomly chooses a tarot card as a response, because even manual tarot readings are random, and Alster is "interested in the natural random and technological random."

When the exhibit is firing on all cylinders, a performer trained in dance physically interprets various tarot card images to help encapsulate the essence of each card and translate that to onlookers.

The entire exhibition is curated by Monika Burian, one of the organizers of the annual avant garde Tina B. festival, and Vernon City now houses younger artists, all born between 1970 and 1984. There are paintings, installations and multimedia artwork including video, projections and the aforementioned 22 cell phones fittingly accompanied by 22 phone chargers. No Reply Necessary's opening May 26 included live music, the performance component of Alster's work and food from Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Armenia and Georgia, emblematic of the exhibition's generally eclectic feel.

In addition to artist, Alster proved a particularly helpful tour guide one recent afternoon:

Lukáš Machalický's work, which includes stacks of papers with text projected from above, was an example of "post-minimalism" with an "atmosphere connecting with past memory."

Martin Kocourek's photograph of Times Square with light projected through it from behind was "kind of impressionist" and "emotional."

Austrian Florian Grond's small creation on a pedestal in the center of the gallery's second room was "maybe a form of an ocean; I don't know."

The most conventional of works at the exhibition are two large paintings by Robert Šalanda, sharing the gallery's front room with Alster's work. One of the paintings appears to portray a bearded psychiatrist - very much resembling Freud - overseeing a reclined patient, the faces of both as blotches that could appear on a Rorschach test.

Jan Pfeiffer, a recent nominee for the prestigious ESSL Award for young artists, uses animation, an audio track and photography. Daniel Hanzlík has simple basic installations, one of which could be a collection of city skyscrapers.

The new Galerie Vernon City is the result of what could be called a discounted rental agreement between Burian and the building's landlord, a reflection of the tough times for the Czech arts community with budget cuts increasingly common and less grant money available to aspiring artists.

"I am really scared about the culture in Prague," said Alster, whose former employer, the CIANT gallery, recently closed. "Only the commercial galleries will survive."

Uncertainty in the arts community perhaps makes Alster's work all the more relevant. But do her digital tarot cards have a predilection for the future of modern art in lean economic times?

"Tarot is speaking when you don't take it too seriously," she said.

Much like the mind-expanding work at Galerie Vernon City.

Benjamin Cunningham can be reached at
bcunningham@praguepost.com