A Rewarding Exhibit of Czech Art Works

Viewers looking for overt symbols of the shifting tide of Czechoslovak politics in the exhibition, “Czech Introspective,” will be disappointed. But those who hunger for vital, fresh expressions from a distant, long-suppressed cultural community will feel richly rewarded by the show, which contains 30 works on paper by contemporary Czech artists. It remains on view at the Ilan Lael Foundation Gallery downtown through Sept. 23.

Hannah Bouldin, an American art historian who helped bring the work to the United States and facilitated the show’s California tour, stressed that the work is not about the “Velvet Revolution” that ousted Czechoslovakia’s Communist leaders in favor of new, democratic government.

“This work isn’t necessarily political. The artists or members of their families were not in the ‘right’ party or weren’t saying the ‘right’ things, and that prevented their work from being shown.”

A few of the nine artists represented in the show previously have had international exposure for their work, but others have had relatively little. All are accomplished at translating their interior visions--thus the show’s title, “Czech Introspective”--into fluid watercolor, crisp ink lines or tight, lithographic imagery.

The selection of work purposely shows a diversity of styles and approaches, Bouldin said. It was sponsored and initially organized in Prague by the Linhart’s Foundation, a nonprofit group founded in 1987 to promote Czech culture.

Mila Poupetova’s “Expulsion From Paradise” ranks as the most poignant work in the show. Rendered in watercolor, ink and coffee, this interpretation of the biblical theme shows Eve as a wisp of a woman under Adam’s strong arm, leaving a realm identified only by a few strokes of crimson. Poupetova scratches and scars the paper’s surface, inflicting injuries that bleed rust, symbols of the damage suffered by her wounded and vulnerable subjects.

The figures in Zdenek Svoboda’s lithographs exude a different type of vulnerability. Based on images from old family photographs, they operate in stilled time, trapped or at least slowed by the viscous weight of memory. In one print from his “From My Life” series, two young children wade through a deep, tempestuous sea of dark grasses. In another, a family sits stoically for its portrait, isolated in a vast field punctuated only by buildings on the horizon and a scattering of anthurium blossoms below.

Among the show’s other highlights are Martin Mainer’s sometimes somber, sometimes coy drawings of indefinable forms, and Jan Franek’s fine, flurried webs of line enmeshed in radiant pools of color.

Whether looking inward for responses to the political, social and cultural revolution their country is experiencing, or adapting such traditional artistic themes as the expulsion from paradise or the Sisyphean myth, these artists demonstrate succinctly and powerfully that Czech visual culture is flourishing.

Ilan Lael Foundation Gallery, 846 5th Ave., through September 7. Open weekdays 9-5.

In contrast to the “Czech Introspective” show is Mario Torero’s multimedia exhibition, “The Totalitarian Zone,” abounds in concrete references to the political upheaval in Czechoslovakia. The show takes its name from a large, international show held in Czechoslovakia in 1989. Torero traveled to Prague for a month this past spring and returned feeling changed, disoriented, but stimulated to respond to the cultural renaissance he says he witnessed there.

On Aug. 12, he began painting a temporary mural at Installation Gallery downtown. He will continue work in the space, dubbed a “studio in progress,” until Sept. 13, when the gallery will hold a review of the finished work. The exhibition, which will also feature articles, photographs and a videotape Torero made while abroad, will close Sept. 21.

Now nearly halfway through its run, the show consists primarily of a single large unfinished mural that spans two gallery walls. Painted in aggressive strokes of black, white, turquoise and magenta, it presents a melange of images of violence, power, danger and courage. A fanged monster with bulging eyes and hungry jaws dominates the gallery’s long wall and seems to symbolize the nuclear threat. Tanks have aligned themselves in an imposing row below, but their guns have gone limp. Between the monster and the tanks pushes a lone, determined man with sword in hand, forging ahead toward a spinning globe and a mass of people, arms raised, emitting a collective “NO.”

Peace signs and dollar signs, tears, clouds and flames also emerge in this dense outpour of protest and solidarity. Painted busts of Stalin and the latest Communist wanna-be-dictator, Gennady Yanayev stare at the rebellion from the opposite wall, stone-faced and stern. Though Torero’s work is still incomplete and specific links to Czechoslovak politics are not yet clearly defined, his mural does begin to exude the spirit of revolution that now permeates Czechoslovakia and other former Eastern Bloc countries.

Installation Gallery, 719 E St., through Sept. 21. Open Tuesday through Saturday 12-5. A closing review of the finished work will be held Friday, Sept. 13, from 7 to 10 p.m.