Entropa

To my own delight, I finally got to visit David Cerny's Entropa which was on display at DOX Prague for almost a year now after it had finished shocking the Europeans in Brussels.

This David Cerny is one hell of an artist, he sure knows how to provoke and take the piss out of stiff issues in our world. I love his work because it's thought provoking and is not gratuitous - that is, there's always more than meets the eye and some meanings reveal themselves after a bit of thinking.

Of course, not all of his stuff may be emanating meanings and symbols but it's most always fun.

Have a look at the official booklet for some interpretations of the pieces, and think of some personal ones :)

Malta

Italy - football players getting off with they balls

Bulgaria - this has caused the greates rage, however there's more to its meaning. I've learned about the chilly relations between turks living in bulgaria and etnic bulgarians so this brings a whole new meaning to the depiction turkish squats.

France

Finland

Germany

Greece

Slovakia

Czech Republic

Slovenia

Holland

Latvia

Romania - we got away quite easy on this one!

Luxembourg

The big picture

George Orwell's cup of tea

Prague is a very cultural city: there is always something happening in any immaginable art field. However in some of them there's the language barrier which is totally understandable obviously. My basic Czech skills aren't of much use when attempting to see a play for instance.
There are fortunately some very good workarounds: I discovered here the non verbal theatre which can be fascinating really as I've already seen two such shows - it emphasises how speech is merely one of the many forms of communication, many times not necessarily the best one.

The second workaround is actually proper theatre in English. Thanks to the large expat community in Prague and to the people who care about their theatrical cravings, there is the Fringe festival every year for 8 or 9 years now.

And since i have a weakness for theatre I fully profited from this veritable 'theatre season' and saw 7 performances, some better than others. If you read till here you might be wondering about the title - well here it is: I saw a really good performance of George Orwell tonight, he was telling the audience stories from his life 'through' a really good actor who spoke at an alarming pace which really kept me attentive for the full hour and a half.

Apart from reading 1984 which is a chilling experience and an mind opener in respect to world politics I didn't really know much about him. Turns out he was a very interesting character, an idealist escaping from life's unfairness in his work. A thing he failed to mention in tonight's performance however - quite unforgivable for an Englishman trying to set the world on the proper course - was how to make proper tea!

Fantastic art of Mark Ryden

I've discovered these intriguing artworks today while browsing on some blogs, be sure to check out the artist's website.

Enjoy!

Alexandrina Hristov

A very nice artist from Moldova, Romania's little sister country:

Homer Simpson, Rembrand style

My art section strikes again!


Well, if this ain't art, i donnow what is :D
Here's a cool collection of Simpsons paintings via clandestino.
And there's more funny stuff too

Art nouveau meets manga

I ran into the website/blog of Audrey Kawasaki, painter and erotic artist, as she's described on wikipedia, the artwork is quite amazing, although i could see it a bit commercial, to put it this way. The detail on the lips, eyes is remarkable though. You can take a look yourselves at her recent exhibition online - isn't the internet great?!

Really, if you come to think about it, it's wonderful to be able to see beautiful artwork from your comfy seat in front of the pc, without having to pay/visit galleries. Of course the artists deserve not only verbal recognition but also some $. I'd even be willing to pay for seeing some remarkable artist's online gallery.

Although, as far as I'm concerned, I'm too little preoccupied of enjoying art in front of the screen and it's a pity. I guess I'm not used to this but rather to the conventional way in which I actually go to some gallery as if that place alone gives some higher importance to the works of art. I've actually seen some horrible crap at the modern art musem in Prague and wondered how in the world they got to be there. For example, a guy spilling the guts of a sheep onto a naked girl. There were life size photos in b/w and color (the color were simply too hard to stand).

Coming back to the subject, there probably are lots of amazing works out there on the net. I'm going to start a new art label and try to fill it with what amazes me.