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An artistic metamorphosisFrom book pages to gallery walls, show transforms Kafka

Posted: May 5, 2010

By Sarah Karacs - For the Post 

Courtesy Photo

Portraits of Kafka greet you from all sides as you enter the gallery. The pictures add a Surrealist element to his melancholic gaze.

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In what was once the Jewish ghetto, you will find yourself surrounded by compositions that depict Franz Kafka's portrait in various forms. This isn't the Kafka Museum or a bookshop, nor is it a tourist shop trading in useless trinkets bearing that iconic face. In fact, you are in a gallery surrounded by the works of the renowned Montenegrin surrealist, Dimitrije Popović, whose current exhibition pays homage to the Prague-born writer.

Though Popović has works exhibited alongside the likes of Salvador Dali, Ernst Fuchs and Leonor Fini in prestigious galleries across the world, this is his first foray into the Czech Republic at the gallery Dea Orh. And, much like a reading of Metamorphosis, The Trial or The Castle, which plunge audiences into the writer's bewildering and captivating absurdist world, a trip to Popović's exhibition is a staggering experience.

As you enter the gallery, you are met with Kafka's melancholic gaze. His portrait graces every wall. The collection is a haunting series of pieces that unite the writer with his surrealist literature in a visual format. In one particularly alarming work, a minimalist depiction of Kafka features ribs protruding from Popović's otherwise realistic depiction of his clothed torso, while another juxtaposes Kafka's portrait with a skeletal jaw. A profile is portrayed at one end of the gallery as transforming into an insect, while, on the other, the writer is featured naked, both flesh and bones exposed. Continuing further into the gallery reveals a painting in which the writer has an invisible rope bound across his face.

Popović, who was first inspired by Kafka in his high-school years, promises that though the works are alarming, they were not created with the sole intention to shock.

Dimitrije Popović
Where: Dea Orh Gallery (Kozí 3, Prague 1)
When: Runs through May 18, Open Mon.-Sat., 11 a.m.-7 p.m.
Admission: Free
www.deaorh.com

"I believe the works in themselves aren't particularly shocking, and that the element of shock certainly isn't a gratuitous component to my art," he says. "What is shocking is Kafka's reality and imagination, both of which I have striven to depict in these works."

Popović was born in Cetinje in 1951 and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1976. He has devoted his career to pursuing philosophical subjects, most notably in his art but also as a critic and philosophical essayist. His works cover a range of subjects from pop culture to biblical metaphors and are both inspired by and continue to inspire the Surrealist art scene. Along with Kafka, Popović cites Bosch and Rimbaud as influential figures who helped hone his style that strives to capture the unique beauty of the bizarre and perverse.

True to Surrealist form, the features of Popović's works, like the protruding rib cage and the gaping, exposed jaw, make the works unsettling; all are of a symbolic significance to both Popović and the writer he depicts.

"That I worked bones into the piece is by no means a senseless act that had the aim of repulsing my viewers. Rather, I believe the ribcage is emblematic of the pain Kafka had to endure throughout his entire life," Popović says. "As a sufferer of tuberculosis, Kafka's physical agony in his chest was an inherent feature in his life that I believe is central to the harrowing nature of his works."

The exhibit gives a particularly strong nod to Kafka's Metamorphosis, a short, absurdist story in which a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, wakes up one morning to discover he is transformed into a large, unsightly insect.

"I associate the Kafka we recognize from his portrait as inextricably linked with the central character in Metamorphosis. The literary work aches with Kafka's own suffering and the tragic awareness that all men are inherently alienated and alone," Popović says.

"I believe it is the role of the artist to explore the essence of life through art, and these works of mine reflect that investigation through Kafka's lens in a series of paintings that capture the emotional metamorphosis I myself underwent on reading the classic work."