Stolen Light, 2025
Libor Novotný
Neon light (diameter 40cm)
A sculpture placed in public space is never just an object – it also carries ideas and shows power. The symbols we see around us every day shape how we think about the world. In the 1950s, the halo of twelve stars was borrowed from a Catholic statue of the Virgin Mary and turned into the logo of the European Union. It was supposed to create a feeling of trust, dignity, and familiarity.
In my work, I bring this “logo” back into the world of sculpture. The halo turns an ordinary, “profane” figure into something sacred. It reveals how, in the postwar years, labor itself was celebrated almost like a new religion—at the very same time the EU flag was being designed. A miner from the 1930s, originally a symbol of work and faith in progress, suddenly becomes a saint.
This statue, made in the style of socialist realism typical for Eastern Europe, now carries a transformed EU logo.
The work is a guerrilla installation, created during a time when Senate elections are taking place in the Czech Republic—when questions about belonging to the EU, or breaking away from it, are some of the most debated topics in local politics.
Installation assistance Jiří Šigut Photographer Tomáš Knoflíček
On Site
About the Artist
Libor Novotný is a creator of objects and spatial installations, often conceived for public space in the form of interventions. In terms of content, in the past they were often based on work with text and semantic messages, and gradually they began to show an interest in physical processes and natural phenomena. However, this "naturalness" was always associated with cultural symbols and was in a certain way contaminated by civilizational or technical impulses. Currently, this natural visuality is slightly lost and the works have mimicry of traditional sculptural work, even though it grows out of the same type of thinking.
The cultural references mentioned here take the form of recycling and using already existing forms from the history of art (crucifixes, sculptural portraits of antiquity and the Baroque, etc.). An important part of Novotný's approach is drawing, which is very often at the beginning of the work process as a way of immediate reflection on things and phenomena. A certain part is subsequently finalized in the material, but some consciously remain only on paper and form a kind of parallel interpretation of specific stories and situations.
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