Some say all contemporary art’s a swiz: here’s an artist who appears to fully embrace the concept! From ArtDaily.org – go there to read the full story… but can we imagine such a work on the streets of Canberra? I suspect we don’t have a category for his sense of humour…

“The idea was simple but good. So effective that he convinced the presidency of the European Council, which this semester is headed by the Czech Republic, to give its blessing and the 500,000 Euros needed to finance it. Czech artist David Cerný promised the following: a collaboration between 27 artists from the European Community who would put forth their vision from their own countries. France was portrayed as a labor strike, Spain as a slab of concrete and Italy into a soccer field. [and jeepers, go to his website above if only to look at his bus stop!]

The only problem is that behind this work of art, which has caused great controversy reducing Greece to a huge fire, Romania into a Dracula castle, there is only one creative mind, that of David Cerný.

Czech Deputy Prime Minister, Alexandr Vondra, has confessed feeling “surprisingly sorry” after discovering that the only author of Entropa is Cerný and not 27 artists, as had been stipulated in the contract with the artist.

“David Cerný is the only person responsible for not fulfilling his commitment”, said Vondra, who added that the Czech presidency is analyzing what to do with the installation, which has already been placed at the Justus Lipsius builiding of the EU Council building and which was supposed to be inaugurated on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Cerný, known for his sculptures such as Freud hanging in the middle of the streets in Prague or for painting a rose on a Soviet tank, has laughed all along and said that he wanted to prove “that Europe could laugh at itself”.

Cerny, who also invented 26 false names of European artists that had supposedly collaborated with him, recognizes that he knew the truth would come out and says that economic restrictions and lack of time motivated him to do the whole work by himself.”