Brown-Nosers

David Černý has a number of controversial, provocative sculptures scattered throughout Prague and the wider world. Of all of these, Brown-nosers is perhaps among his most not-safe-for-work exhibits.

The sculptures are a permanent fixture hidden in the back garden of Futura, an art museum. The gigantic, naked lower halves of two bodies are bent over and lean against the side of the building, revealing their rather gaping orifices. Though their somewhat obscene appearance doesn’t make the figures look too inviting, Brown-nosers is actually an interactive, mixed-media exhibit.

Viewers are invited to climb the ladder leading to the macroscopic derrieres and stick their heads inside the behemoth butts. But rather than being greeted with a slurry of some sort of sculpted internal sludge, as one might expect to find within an artistic anus, people will instead see a television screen that plays a video of two Czech politicians spoon feeding each other to the sounds of Queen’s “We Are the Champions.”

Brown-nosers was erected in 2003. The approximately 17-foot-tall artwork is supposedly a metaphor for the state of Czech politics. Surprisingly, the giant sculptures can be a bit difficult to find—visitors to Futura must first wind their way through the building’s internal exhibits to reach the back garden.