Scandal Erupts Over Prague Exhibition: Nuns Cover Sculptures' Genitals With a Yellow Circle

A scandal has broken out at Prague's Nová síň gallery over an exhibition by sculptor Kryštof Hošek titled "Omne Animal": the Ursuline order of nuns, which owns the building, demanded that a promotional poster featuring nude sculptures be removed — and then a yellow circle was slapped over the male nude figure in the photo, supposedly to cover the genitals, though in practice it only drew more attention to them.

The exhibition opened on September 2, and according to the artist, complaints from the nuns started coming in about ten days later. One of the sisters visited the exhibition in person, after which the gallery began receiving demands to take down the poster advertising the show from the building's façade.

The Poster Was Removed, Then Brought Back — With a Circle

The poster initially vanished from the façade, but this didn't sit well with the artist himself. The gallery's management then put the poster back up, but covered the depiction of male genitalia with a yellow circle. "At that moment, we didn't have anything on hand other than a yellow circle," gallery representative Ondřej Sikora told the outlet. According to him, by Friday evening the situation over the partial concealment of the nude body had been resolved to everyone's satisfaction, and after Hošek shared the story on social media, the exhibition started attracting even more visitors than before.

The artist himself disagrees with that assessment and denies having any interest in this kind of publicity. In his view, it should be up to the gallery operator to handle disputes arising from the building owner's particular take on contemporary art — without breaching the agreements made with exhibition participants or the terms of the lease.

According to Hošek, he paid 45,000 crowns to rent the gallery for two weeks, and the contract included placing a poster on the building's façade. The artist maintains that the exhibition fully matches what was agreed upon before the show opened. The exhibition is due to close on Sunday, and according to the gallery operator, there are no plans to end it early. The outlet was unable to obtain a comment from the Ursuline order itself.

An Established Artist, Previously Uncensored

Kryštof Hošek, 42, is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he studied figurative sculpture under Jan Hendrych and Petr Oriešek. The sculptor has previously exhibited at such prestigious institutions as the DOX Centre, the Kampa Museum, the National Gallery Prague, and GASK. Although his works engage with the human body and fundamental human experiences, behavior, and actions, they had never before been considered scandalous or indecent.

According to Sikora, the contracts with the building's owners state that exhibitions at the Nová síň gallery must not, in their content or message, violate good morals and moral principles. However, he notes, the gallery operator and the artist on one side, and the nuns who own the building on the other, may understand these principles quite differently.

The exhibition's title, "Omne Animal," references a poem of the same name by Czech decadent poet Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic, as well as the Latin saying "Post coitum omne animal triste" — "Every living creature is sad after intercourse." In his work, Hošek explores eternal themes of the human soul and the finitude of life, working with historicizing bronze and blending biblical and ancient myths with a contemporary interpretation, drawing inspiration in part from the work of Edgar Allan Poe.

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Source: novinky.cz