Compared with New German painters from the Leipzig and Dresden schools, contemporary Czech painting is not considered hot on the international art market — or even at home. The Richard Adam collection of contemporary Czech painting currently showing at Galerie Rudolfinum gives work by young and middle-generation Czech artists some well-deserved recognition.

Richard Adam, born in 1953 in Znojmo, is the most important collector of contemporary Czech painting. Because of his thoroughness and the variety of his taste, his collection is considered by curators (in particular Petr Nedoma, the director of the state-financed Galerie Rudolfinum) and art critics such as Lenka Lindaurová to be superior to those of public institutions.

In the catalog for the Rudolfinum show, he writes: "Why is it then that I collect art? Because I love it, that's why! It's my passion! In fact, it's my obsession! And why do I collect mostly contemporary art? Perhaps because it relates to the current time's moods and feelings using the language of the here and now."

For the most part, his collection comprises a men's club. Among the 24 artists whose works are on display at the Rudolfinum, only a small number are women. Many of the paintings present insular worlds cut off from society or inner visions. In the gallery's first room, Jiří Černický's works are standouts: Kuwait is a psychedelic image — a hopeless swan trapped in an oil spill, struggling to free itself. Acné, from which the title of the exhibition is taken, resembles a cosmic surfboard on canvas; it has a day-glow yellowish green glaze with pimples all over the place.

In the gallery's main room, Jakub Špaňhel's Anorexic (Markéta), at 430 x 158 cm (172 x 62 inches), is an out-of-place giantess of underweight femininity. Petr Kožíšek's As Lucka and Miška is a captivating image of two children in winter, remarkable for its simple use of squiggly lines and a dark brown background, resembling cake glazing or postmodernist stained glass. In the same room, Ivan Vosecký's Jesus Christ and Czech Television are both playfully simple — a relief from the many denser canvases in the show, such as Girsa's postcards and his homage to the speed-metal band Slayer, or the works of Petr Pastrňák.

In the next large room, Jiří Franta's intriguing untitled works have similarities to Bolf's, with morphed cartoon figures in surrealistic episodes.

Patricie Fexová is the first female artist to make an appearance, in the same room as Franta, with her scene of three nude women tossing compact discs. The other women in the show — Alice Nikitinová, Věra Kotlárová and Blanka Jakubčíková — are saved for the last room.

While Kotlárová's large, meditative purplish-blue canvas sets a dominating ambience in its space, the standouts here are Jakub Hošek's crude paintings and drawings on cardboard, an untitled painting that could be described as an igloo with little Cousin It (the hairy thing from the Addams Family) sporting a ponytail. Hošek's Lick Your Footsteps to Clean My Room at the exit is like an alternative entrance to never-never land.