David Cerny Solo Museum Show

This year marks the centenary of the author of The Metamorphosis , which provides the opportunity to talk with the famous and controversial artist who paid tribute to him with a huge rotating head installed a decade ago in the center of Prague.

When leaving the Národní třída Metro station, passers-by face the silver reflections of the 30-feet-high, 39-ton stainless steel mechanical sculpture. The author's face is transfigured and the 42 layers that make it up complete a cycle of movement until returning to his human form again.

It is one of the most sought-after attractions in the city, where there are tourist tours to witness the works of public art that Černý has spread throughout the city, such as the giant babies climbing the Television Tower, Sigmund Freud hanging from the outside of a building or the two bronze men urinating on a pond in the shape of the Czech Republic.

Although David lives a two-minute walk from the kinetic sculpture with a literary spirit, he avoids passing by that point, because if he gets close, people usually ask him for selfies and autographs. But he recently took apart her head to completely replace the internal mechanism; Then there will be reopening events on February 28 and 29.

The movements were rescheduled; changed in a new way. So it will be perfectly silent, fantastic, smooth. About which, unfortunately, I can't say how it was built before, but it wasn't my fault. And, of course, we're planning a couple more things for Kafka's centenary anniversary.

The writer is remembered in the world a century after his death. In Prague he continues his mark with a museum named after him, in the Olsany cemetery, the Alley of Gold, the Louvre café and a couple of statues. He is a famous figure in the Czech capital, despite the author's own request that his work be destroyed by fire, an order that was ignored by his friend Max Brod. Whoever bequeathed the novel The Trial died at the age of 40 on June 3, 1924, almost unknown.

The statue of Černý is a symbol of the three languages ​​on which the city is based, since, before the Second World War, German, Czech and, of course, Yiddish were spoken. We are a cultural mix of a Jewish-German-Bohemian community. Furthermore, I chose the place where it is located because he was an employee in the office next door, about 50 meters away. Národní Street is a kind of border between Czech and German, that explains why the sculpture is there. I also used metamorphosis .

Humor and controversy

The dissected face also faces the back of the town hall, the most Kafkaesque typical example , he says during the conversation with La Jornada. Simply imagine the office that has great power over us. Sometimes you walk down the halls and there is no way to find a solution, so you go from door to door and are sent from one employee to another. That symbolizes Kafka's world .

Like Franz Kafka, David Černý was born in Prague in 1967, 84 years after the man dedicated to letters. He masters like no other the art of balancing controversy and humor , he is described as someone who has also made his mark in the Czech capital, and beyond the borders. The beginning of his notoriety was in 1991, when he painted a Soviet tank pink, one of the first public interventions of the artist described as controversial , which even cost him a brief time in prison.

In the Musoleum, a space that the famous sculptor opened in 2023 in a former distillery in Prague, he exhibits a sculpture by Kafka, along with other smaller-scale models of some of his most representative pieces, such as the bus with arms that is exhibited in London. and the bronze Trabant car.

The name of this five-story space, in Černý's ironic humor, combines the words for museum and mausoleum, but the art is very alive , he emphasizes in a deep and good-natured voice.

In a way, his work is Kafkaesque: I probably use something like Kafka's humor. Something important is that people think that his writing is depressive, but I prefer to say that it is deeply ironic, with a special humor. Well, it's what I call the Czech type of humor, very dark, sometimes inappropriate, but, you know, we still have guts to survive that .

The closest Mexicans will get to the head, the artist suggests, is the new sculpture in Santa Monica, California, loosely based on Kafka's in Prague. For this site, he modeled the face of David Lynch, who is also his favorite filmmaker. He once said that if he could choose a brother, it would be Franz Kafka .

Although the piece located in an apartment complex was completed two years ago, it is not available to the public, because the building does not yet have permission to open, so it remains wrapped. On his Instagram account, Černý posted a photo posing on the giant head.

He announced that he is working on a large sculpture that will be in front of the Czech House in Paris this summer, as part of the Olympic Games.

Last year, the sculptor, architect, filmmaker and aviator pilot showed his work for the first time in Mexico at the Rebelión exhibition, at the Tijuana Cultural Center.

They have called me a provocateur. I usually say I'm not, but the world around me is boring. So, I'm trying to relativize, make something exceptional.