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Biting the hands that feed them

DOX debut reflects the dilemma of art under capitalism
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By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
December 17th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Waxing capitalistically. Alan Greenspan is only one of Cano's subjects.
José María Cano: Welcome to Capitalism! With Michael Bielický, Matej Krén, Jiří Hůla


at DOX Center for Contemporary Art Ends Feb. 8. Osadní 34, Prague 7-Holešovice. Open Mon. 10 a.m.-8 p.m., Wed.-Fri. noon-8 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

By the selection of artists for its inaugural exhibit, DOX makes a clear statement: This new center for contemporary art is not about trendy art fads from the West, nor is it aimed at the lowest common denominator that will bring in the masses and fill the cash box.
“Welcome to Capitalism!” is the title of a project by the main exhibiting artist, José María Cano from Spain. However, this title also connects loosely to the installations by the three other artists: Michael Bielický, Matej Krén and Jiří Hůla. The choice of this project also sends another message. For the time being, DOX is dependent solely on private funders, and is urging the public to help support its cause, since it has thus far received no funding from the Culture Ministry or from city cultural coffers. Yet its first main exhibition sticks a finger in the eye of the richest men and women in the West — traditionally the very people whose philanthropy often benefits the arts. But then, this has been the dilemma of artists from the glory days of art patronage to the modern capitalistic system.
Cano (born in 1959 in Madrid) makes large wax paintings of images copied from the news and financial pages of international newspapers, and from the sex advertising found at the back of less-reputable papers in the Spanish press. His works are spread throughout the building, filling up most of the main hall and all but one of the numerous tower gallery spaces.
His portraits of the rich are a gesture of both cynicism and pragmatism. “Nowadays, the fundamental motive behind art is money,” Cano says. “And nobody, neither artists nor gallery owners, allows this to be recognized. So is money so important and interesting to us all? Well, then let’s paint the men who appear in the Wall Street Journal: Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch … the modern-day Venus and Aphrodite.”
The portraits themselves are not remarkable — Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and Francois Pinault have not gained international acclaim through their looks. Kate Moss is set in with the Wall Street One Hundred, perhaps for some aesthetic contrast.
Cano is also demonstrating that classical art subjects have not changed so much over the centuries. The collection of any major museum in Europe will consist largely of portraits of the rich and important people of their day; local examples include members of the Wallenstein and Lobkowicz families.
Cano’s subject matter is ironic for another reason. After abruptly ending an extremely lucrative career as a pop music celebrity in the Spanish-speaking world, he decided to devote his life to making art. As a musician, Cano had no problem selling out. As an artist on the international scene, reaching the end of the rainbow is more problematic.
At the entrance to the main hall, Michael Bielický, in collaboration with Kamila Richter, has created Falling Times, with a theme similar to that of Cano’s. This project creates a cascade of computer-generated graphics in real time to match actual news headlines. These graphics are projected high on a wall of the main stairway and also on a small computer monitor at the entrance. (It is also online at Fallingtimes.info.)
Sharing space with Cano in the main hall is Slovak artist Matej Krén with a commanding installation titled Sediment, a daunting wall of thousands of old (and worthless) Czech books, with an optical illusion on the inside surface that creates a sense of infinite books. Krén has a similar but smaller work permanently installed in Prague’s Municipal Library. DOX should also consider keeping Krén’s great wall of books on permanent display.
On the second floor, there is an interactive collaborative project involving archival memory. Consisting of art exhibition invitations, catalogs and other material, mainly from the Czech art scene but also including foreign artists, the items were collected over the decades by Jiří Hůla. The installation of Hůla’s vast collection was designed by the artist Dominik Lang.
Besides Cano’s works, Hůla’s contribution is the most appropriate for this inaugural exhibit. Jiří Hůla and his brother Zdeněk should rank among the noblemen of the Czech art world for their art activities under the communist regime, which included running an underground gallery (H Gallery) in their home and in nearby locations in the village of Kostalec nad Černými lesy. Instead, Hůla is today an overlooked archivist and a modest artist in his own right.
DOX’s presentation of four European projects with little in common in terms of method, but closely kindred in terms of their stance toward the art world, is emblematic of the attitude of the gallery’s founders. The artists presented here are all dedicated to the core, despite low odds of ultimately earning a profit from art.
And so it is with DOX’s founders. Why else would they even dream of building such an ambitious art center in the Czech Republic, where contemporary art is sadly a low priority for the government and for society in general.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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