Mario Chromý

The uniqueness of the work of Mario Chromý – artist, musician and critic of social and political events – does not reside in any specific formal or visual style, but, on the contrary, in the multiplicity of approaches he takes depending on the content of his communication. The resources he selects, be this painting, drawing, installation, object, sculpture or video, depend on the specific theme. Often this will be a work that criticises political events and their impact on society or the media and the absurdity of the resulting situation in a more or less literal, sharply humorous and caricatured way. In a text accompanying Chromý’s exhibition at the National Library of Technology in Prague (2014), the curator Milan Mikuláštík spoke tellingly of a “craftiness reminiscent of Hašek [author of The Good Soldier Švejk]”, that lends Chromý’s work both wit and tragedy.

Often Chromý will take up political affairs and cases involving the mafia (for which he created the website www.kauzicky.cz, which is not in operation at present), corporate practices and the office environment of the 1990s and 2000s, while subversively drawing on their aesthetic. For example, in his diploma thesis Zoo (2002) he placed the animals featuring in company logos in an installation made of advertising light hoardings. One is invited to compare this world with the jungle, in which the principle of survival of the fittest applies, while also being made aware of the absurdity of combining nature with a phenomenon that is more associated with the oppression or destruction of nature. The artist later followed this up with a video Safari (2010), in which these animal logos hunt and devour each other.

Mario Chromý became better known upon winning the Oskár Čepan Award in 2003 for a series of videos. His short videos and animations are characterised by humour and the subversion of individual situations, as for instance in Merlot (2002, in collaboration with Mark Ther), which depicts a secret romantic “drama” between two men in suits in the Café Slavia. Inevitably there is a long shot of a wildly colourful tie, the symbol of the system and power (of a politician, manager or businessman) that appears in Chromý’s work repeatedly (e.g. in Pavučina / Cobweb, a spatial installation woven from men’s ties, which he exhibited in 2007 at the Trafačka Gallery). Merlot and the video Sacrifice (again in collaboration with Mark Ther) are parodies of the Three Colours trilogy of films directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski.

Chromý has also displayed an interested in the visualisation of different statistics and economic graphs, by means of which he has offered a critical commentary on the politics of growth. In Důležitý je růst / Growth is Important (2014) he materialised these graphs in objects made of plasticine and planted them in pots. Modelling from plasticine, a material with a limited shelf life, is one of Chromý’s favourite techniques, which in turn is related to the themes he works with. Often these are realistic or cartoonish situations or figural compositions relating to tense current political themes that nevertheless in time disappear from the collective memory (e.g. Být či nebýt / To Be Or Not To Be, Morituri Te Salutant).

Figural sculptures appear in his work either as cartoons or realistically conceived dressed figures. Clothing is an important element. Hyperrealita / Hyper-Reality (2009) depicts a homeless person rummaging through a garbage bin, metaphorically that is: a thrown out person. In Rodina na pochodu / Family on the March (2012) and Noční můra souseda Vomáčky / Neighbour Vomáčka’s Nightmare (2017), Chromý reflects in a critical yet tragicomical way on the increasing xenophobia, racism and intolerance in our society.

Chromý is also a long-term collector of catastrophic tabloids and the headlines that appear on the internet. These absurd, sometimes fantastic, stories become the models for the drawings, comics, collages and paintings that were on show, for instance, at the exhibition Mrtvý přišel na vlastní pohřeb / The Dead Man Came to His Own Funeral at the Final Gallery in Prague (2010). Chromý has himself remarked: “I collect reports that either give the impression of inexplicable phenomena and great portents (‘Millions of mysterious flies have attacked the most haunted village in England’; ‘It rained fish in Australia’) or bizarre situations providing proof of human cowardice (‘In a fit of rage a woman killed her husband by sitting on him’; ‘He wanted revenge on a thorny bush and lit a fire causing millions in damage’).”

ASIO, hudební projekt založený 2009 (společně s manželkou Helenou), https://asio1.bandcamp.com/ Grafický design pro česko-bosenské vydavatelství SAMIZDAT (spolupráce s bosenským spisovatelem a překladatelem Adinem Ljucou, od roku 2016, https://www.samizdat.nu/