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Prague (dpa) - Czech sculptor David Cerny is not in hiding, nor is he apologizing for his latest piece depicting former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein - naked, hog-tied and submerged in a fish tank.
But Cerny, whose work "Shark" has sparked a debate in Europe, admits these are "scary" times for artists who dare focus their creative energies on the sensitive Middle East.
While Muslims worldwide angrily protested Monday over newspaper cartoons portraying Islam's Prophet Mohammed, protests that forced the cartoonists into hiding in Denmark, Cerny was coming to grips with a personal controversy after a Belgian city decided to keep his "Shark" out of a local museum.
The sculptor said Middelkerte, Belgium, Mayor Michel Landuyt had initially approved showing the unusual work at the resort city's upcoming arts festival.
But later the mayor changed his mind and told a local newspaper, "You never know what will happen when you show such explosive material."
Cerny also expressed shock that an Iraqi diplomat in Prague who represents the post-Saddam government recently issued a formal protest against "Shark." He called the diplomat's reaction "bizarre."
Cerny lamented the controversy over what he considers a legitimate work of modern art, as well as the fiery upheaval in the Muslim world and across Europe over the Danish cartoons.
He's quite aware that, like the cartoonist, his art has put him at risk.
"Of course it is scary," Cerny told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "It's scary for everybody on this old continent."
"Shark" was created in the spirit of another, famous "freeze" piece by British artist Damien Hirst called "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living."
Hirst broke new ground and sparked controversy among animal rights groups in 1991 by unveiling a piece in which a real tiger shark was suspended, as if alive in a tank of formaldehyde.
Like Hirst's shark, Cerny's "Hussein" hangs in a fish tank parallel to the surface, in a sea of green fluid. He faces forward, grimacing, with hands tied behind his back.
Cerny, a leading Czech artist for more than 15 years, said his piece was "60 per cent about the Damien Hirst shark" and 40 per cent "about how to solve the situation now" in Iraq.
"It's not insulting anyone," he said. "It's a question about relations."
But does Cerny have an opinion of Hussein, who is now on trial for war crimes,? "Yes"- an opinion shaped by a week-long trip to Baghdad for interviews with Iraqis about two years ago.
"They said he was a tyrant, that he was killing people," Cerny said. "He was a killer."
Cerny returned to the Czech Republic, thought about the awful stories of disappearances and torture, and went to work.
"Shark" is not Cerny's first controversial project.
Since 2003, visitors to a Prague gallery have been able to climb ladders and peer into two rectums sculpted for his work "Brownnosers."
He's also raised eyebrows with lifesize versions of do-it-yourself "kit models" of the body parts of Jesus Christ and a "dead, raped woman."
Among Czechs, Cerny is best known for celebrating the 1989 fall of communism by applying pink paint to a Soviet tank that had been displayed for years on a prominent Prague monument. And his "babies" are giant sculptures of infants crawling up Prague's main TV tower.
With "Shark," Cerny stepped into new territory at a difficult time for free-expression art in Europe.
But although Middelkerte cancelled the display for what Cerny called "ll the things that are happening now," he's sure that "Shark" will get a proper showing.
For starters, Cerny said, the piece is scheduled to show for two days this month at a modern art museum in Oostende, Belgium.
Copyright 2006 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
