David Černý

David Černý first gained notoriety in 1991 when he painted a Soviet tank pink as a memorial to war in his native Prague. Since then his artistic acts of civil disobedience, grand scale installations, and exhibitions have continued to incite strong reactions worldwide.  In 2005, he participated in the Prague Biennale 2 with his work “Shark” - a riff on fellow artist Damian Hirst, which consisted of an image of Saddam Hussein immersed in a tank of formaldehyde. Famously, in a stance against communism in 2015, Černý installed a 30-foot-tall purple hand on a barge in Prague’s Vltava River raising its middle finger in a “Fuck You” directly in front of the castle where Czech president Milos Zeman lived.

Brilliance resides alongside Černý’s rebelliousness in his art. Many recent works were created through the artist’s proprietary and mind-boggling technique of casting three-dimensional objects from everyday life such as guns, tubes, tools, and light bulbs that emerge completely formed yet translucent as if on permanent x-ray. These items are then used in various ways, embedded in polymer resin, to either become subliminal constituents of an overall image, or as singular objects in a composition meant to impart a strong message. Much like the recently installed "Babies" whose faces have been replaced with a bar code stamp to symbolize the dehumanization of society - a very troubling subject to the Czech artist.

Černý is known for his harsh and often crass criticism. It has landed him on the BBC list of the 20 most controversial artworks and in the headlines of many articles.  Hohmann is pleased to represent the timeless, controversial works by an artist not afraid to investigate the political climate, war machine, and other social issues of our tumultuous contemporary times.