More than decoration

Artists must cope with the demands of the market as well as their own creative urges. Some err on one side or the other, while others seek to bridge the gap.

"I have two directions: one is geometric, another is figurative," says Lubomír Typlt, an artist with an exhibition now showing at Galerie Vernon City.

Typlt's affinity for geometric painting - his most commercially successful work - is featured, along with several installation pieces that helped inspire his paintings at the Old Town gallery known for showing new, progressive work.

In one room, an amalgamation of old bicycles and oil cans take center stage, on the wall opposite, a painting of the same figures.   

"I see the object as a sculpture, and I exhibit them together," Typlt said. "I don't want to make sculptures but use the ideas they generate."

Typlt has been back in Prague for two years after spending the previous eight years in Germany, six in Dusseldorf and two in Berlin. The German capital is often cited as the present heart of the European creative scene in art, literature and film, leading to the question of why Typlt decided to return to Prague.

"Berlin is very big and very cosmopolitan, but there is no money for artists," he said. "There are thousands of artists, but getting things in shows is very complicated; you need to know people."

Typlt's appearance at Galerie Vernon City is hardly a coincidence. Curator Monika Burian says she chose him as an exhibitor for clear-cut reasons.

One of the more curious pieces in the Vernon City exhibition resembles Leonardo da Vinci's Proportions of Man, the sketch that shows a man's body in the center of a circle. In Typlt's version, the man has a Hitler-style mustache, and from his arms hang watering cans - which are also thematically featured in other paintings and part of an installation at this exhibition. The piece, Typlt says, is part of his urge to be provocative and an effort to produce pieces "that are more than just decoration."

A painting in another room that also lends the exhibition its title, Turbine at Night, resembles another da Vinci work, one of his sketches of a "flying machine."

"It wasn't directly inspired by da Vinci," Typlt says.

The most provocative of Typlt's work is omitted from this current exhibition. He has a series of paintings that includes a boy and a cat hanging from a noose. The idea came from an unfortunate incident where Typlt ran over a cat while riding a bicycle (which themselves are featured in works at the Vernon City exhibition).

"They are pictures of what people are capable of," he says, adding that he painted the images with the express idea that they are unlikely to be commercially viable.

While the art world has been hit hard, like any other sector, by the world economic crisis, Typlt says he sees some light at the end of the tunnel.

"I live by selling paintings. The last year was really tough," he said. "Now it is a little better, people can see investing in art is better than investing in other things, like lots of new cars."

Benjamin Cunningham can be reached at
bcunningham@praguepost.com