Paul Brainard: Living Dead

A lot like the alien invasion film genre, which seems to come and go in waves depending on foreign policy and perceived “alien” threat without ever truly disappearing, the zombie film genre has had some serious staying power. Unlike those space aliens, however, the threat with zombies doesn’t come from some distant planet (or “Planet Russia,” if you’re watching a Cold War era film). With zombies it’s always your friends and neighbors who have turned into bumbling flesh-hungry hoards, and there’s always the threat that you too could join the mob of the living dead at the end of the world as we know it.

In Paul Brainard’s exhibition Living Dead, the metaphor of the zombie apocalypse is transformed easily into a luridly colored landscape of a homogenized media saturated consumerist society. Celebrities, anonymous faces, and even the artist himself form Brainard’s hoard of the living dead. As disconnected from each other as they are from the abstracted environment they inhabit, they stumble through undefined spaces overloaded and overlapping with imagery pulled from advertising, pop culture, religion, and pornography. Even with the depiction of perfect plastic flesh, rather than the zombie-typical rotting variety, the American born artist has created his own horror in a void of substance where images of everyday life evoke the emotional despair of a zombie wasteland.

If you’re traveling through Prague, stop by at Dvorak Sec Contemporary. Since the Prague Zombie Walk happens in May every year, you should be able to leave the living dead behind at the gallery door.

September 2 – November 16, 2010 at Dvorak Sec Contemporary, Dlouhá 5, 110 00 Prague, Czech Republic.

Opening hours: Monday – Friday 10am – 6pm and by appointment.

Stay at the ICON Hotel & Lounge in Prague.  Very much alive.

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Categories: Prague, Art, Exhibitions

Contributing writer: Melissa Frost

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