David Černý (1967) is a Czech sculptor. His works can be mainly seen in many locations in Prague.
Černý was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. From 1988 to 1994 he studied at the Kurt Gebauer Studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague and in 1995 and 1996 he participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, New York. In 1994-1995 he took the PSI artists residence, New York, and in 1996 he received the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant. In 1991 he took a Residency of the Swiss Government in Boswil, Switzerland.
He gained notoriety in 1991 by painting a Soviet tank pink, to serve as a war memorial in central Prague. As the Monument to Soviet Tank Crews was a national cultural monument at that time, his act of civil disobedience was considered vandalism and he was briefly arrested. Another of Černý's conspicuous contributions to Prague is "Tower Babies", a series of cast figures of crawling infants attached to Žižkov Television Tower.
In 2005, Černý created Shark, an image of Saddam Hussein in a tank of formaldehyde. The work was presented at the second Prague Biennale that same year. The work is a direct parody of a 1991 work by Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. In 2006, the work was banned in Middelkerke, Belgium, in Bielsko-Biała, Poland, and also in the German town of Büdelsdorf. With respect to the Belgian situation, the mayor of that town, Michel Landuyt, admitted that he was worried that the exhibit could "shock people, including Muslims" in a year already marred by tensions associated with Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed.
The Deputy Mayor of Bielsko-Biała, Zbigniew Michniowski, contacted the city-funded gallery, galeria BWA on 9 September 2006 and threatened dire consequences if the artwork were not removed promptly. In response, Shark was transported to the Szara gallery, in the nearby town of Cieszyn. The mayor of Cieszyn, Bogdan Ficek, distanced himself from Bielsko-Biała City Hall's values. "I can not see any reason a politician should censor art," Ficek said.
His statue METALmorphosis is on display in Charlotte, North Carolina. Černý created a similar outdoor sculpture in 2014 in Prague, called Head of Franz Kafka.
His Entropa, created to mark the Czech presidency of the European Union Council during the first half of 2009, attracted controversy both for its stereotyped depictions of the various EU member states, and because it turned out to have been created by Černý and two friends rather than, as promised, being a collaboration between artists from each of the member states. Some EU member states reacted negatively to the depiction of their country. For instance, Bulgaria decided to summon the Czech Ambassador to Sofia in order to discuss the illustration of the Balkan country as a collection of squat toilets. Meanwhile, the Bulgarian permanent representative to the EU allegedly said "It is a humiliation for the Bulgarian nation and an offense to our national dignity.”
For 2012 Summer Olympics Černý created "London Booster" – a double decker bus with mechanical arms for doing push-ups.
© 2020. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by David Černý. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only
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| David Černý |
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| 1990, Quo vadis |
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| 1996, Embryo |
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| 1996, Statue of Sigmund Freud hanging by one hand |
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| 1996, Statue of Sigmund Freud hanging by one hand |
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| 1999, St. Wenceslas riding a dead horse |
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| 2001, Meet Factory |
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| 2001, Zizkov TV Tower with Crawling Babies |
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| 2001, Zizkov TV Tower with Crawling Babies |
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| 2003, Brown Nosers |
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| 2003, Brown Nosers |
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| 2003, Brown Nosers |
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2004, Piss
Prague |
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2005, Feast of Giants
Bus stop in Liberec |
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| 2007, Metalmorphosis, Charlotte, NC |
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| 2007, Metalmorphosis, Charlotte, NC |
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| 2007, Metalmorphosis, Charlotte, NC |
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2008, Babies
Kampa Park |
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2008, Babies
Kampa Park |
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| 2009, Entropa |
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| 2010, Pomnik Golema |
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2012, Guns
Prague |
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2012, London Booster
in front of Czech House in London |
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2012, London Booster
in front of Czech House in London |
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2013, F@&k Him
Prague |
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2013, In Utero
Prague |
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| 2014, The Head of Franz Kafka |
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| 2014, The Head of Franz Kafka |
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| 2016, Trifot |
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| 2016, Trifot |
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2017, Pegasus
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2019, Top Tower Shipwreck
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| 2020, Socha Brouk |
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| Shark (Saddam Hussein) |
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| X-Ray Violin, n.d. |
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