Artist David Černý represented Kafka's "The Metamorphoses" with a kinetic sculpture depicting the writer's head.
Kafka's “Metamorphoses” represented through a kinetic sculpture which reproduces the head of the well-known writer: here is one of the last works of the Czech artist David Černý, famous for his provocative and irreverent installations.
The work, commissioned by the Quadrio shopping centers in Prague in 2014, consists of a head almost 11 meters high made of stainless steel; the 42 blocks that make up the sculpture rotate independently thanks to a motor. The installation, which has now become a veritable monument that attracts many tourists, is a combination of art and technique: to create it, the artist collaborated with the mechanical engineering department of a well-known company specializing in robotics.
The effect is alienating: the shape of the statue changes without ever stopping, as if to symbolize the alienation of the modern human being within society. It is evident that the artist has taken up one of the peculiar elements of the poetics of the well-known writer: the Kafkaesque characters are often devoid of distinctive physical traits, as well as embedded in dynamics independent of their will, victims of an indecipherable destiny.
The sculpture depicts the dispersion of identity through an empty face, in continuous transformation, which reverberates the surrounding space thanks to the play of mirrors. The continuous decomposition of the face reveals a truth that has to do with the concept of ego identity: our ego is nothing more than the projection of the glances of others, a fragile and ever-changing unity.
In this sculpture Černý therefore not only paid homage to one of the most important European writers of all time, but represented the very essence of the human psyche and the alienation of modern man in society
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