In the last 30 years, the central eastern European nations of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary have experienced tumultuous times. Under communism, state control and censorship forced artists to be regional and nationalistic, but since the soft slides into capitalism and democracy epitomized by the Czech Republic's bloodless "Velvet Revolution" of 1989, they have found a new voice that is far closer to that of their Western European peers.

Part of this has to do with the drive to catch up with the West after the fall of the iron curtain, and the homogenization of local cultures that resulted from exposure to international trends.

For the 11 artists and art collectives in "Positioning: In the New Reality of Europe" at the National Museum of Art in Osaka until Oct. 10 (in Hiroshima from Oct. 29 and Tokyo from Jan. 21, 2006), history has no compelling interest. There seems to be a collective amnesia about their nations' torrid political past, which contributes to the sense that there is little to distinguish the middle European product from the pan-European one.

The tools of capitalism are a popular subject, and the appeal of consumer goods is the focus of the "futuristic propositions" of Antal Lakner. He sees his art as a catalyst for rethinking environments, labor and life, and his ironic "Passive Working Devices" (1998-2000) are gym machines that transform menial manual activity, like pushing a wheelbarrow or painting a wall with an extending roller, into a form of leisure and entertainment.

Marketing and branding strategies accompany his contraptions, alerting spectators to ostensible health benefits. Sometimes the art is simply advertising, like in "Passive Dress -- double gravity suit" (2004-2005), a glossy poster promoting an inflated suit for balancing and stabilizing the human body against the forces of "pure involuntary existence" -- which could be a contemporary response to fellow middle European Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," or perhaps a robust response to the oppressive force of gravity.

Kristof Kintera is another artist concentrating on the consumer/marketing theme. "I'm Sick of It All" is an automated shopping bag filled with groceries that sits alone on the gallery floor. "I don't want to go on like this," it grumbles in a nasty recorded voice. "No, no, no, I can't believe what's going on -- it's unbelievable sh*t," it continues. Other works include his "Appliance Series" (1997-98) of ergonomic household goods designed to fulfill no tangible everyday purpose. They have the look of the new, but as the box packaging states, they are "virtually useless."

The idea of questionable value also haunts Pavlina Fichta Cierna's video work, "About Jozef" (2003). This poignant documentary focuses on the private world of an outsider artist, Jozef. While working as a boiler engineer, he is teaching himself to paint in a devastated building he imagines as an artistic utopia. He is cut loose even from artistic circles and receives no economic benefit from his work, but it gives his life meaning. People that do not relate to his art, he says, "have different values, and I don't want to bother them."

Artistic concerns are paramount to Azorro, a group of four Polish artists whose video works are prone pseudo-philosophical assessments of contemporary art. In "Is the artist allowed to do anything?" (2002) they attempt to ascertain the extent to which their artistic credentials will allow them to get away with antisocial behavior, such as ogling women, swearing on the street, and relieving themselves on trees in a park. Their work is supposed to be provocative, but I was left wondering what reaction are they hoping to provoke. Laughter or indignation?

A form of postmodern resignation lies at the heart of the group's documentary "Everything has been done" (2003), which films the four debating how to do something that has never been done before in the world of art. Every time a member mentions an idea, the others point out that someone else has already done it.

This conundrum also affects the work of photographer Mila Preslova. While pieces like "Wrapped up" (2002) may be visually appealing (her head is wrapped up in yarn that she is knitting), they deal with the constructedness of femininity in ways that have been thoroughly examined elsewhere in earlier decades.

This kind of work is represented by several other female artists as well: Agnes Szepfalvi's kitschy narrative paintings like "Clearing" (2001) and "Choice" (2002) have female protagonists at their center, often in traditional and socialized roles; her work with Csaba Nemes is like a filmmaker's storyboard, where ideas are realized as text and images merge; and Ilona Nemeth translates her concept of femininity into an aural and tactile experience in "Polyfunctional Woman" (1996), a bed punctuated with holes from which emerge purrs and groans.

Miroslaw Balka's title "1750x760x250, 3 x (55 x 15 x 24)" (2001) gives the size and shape of the artist's family home -- now his atelier -- reproduced as a building-shaped structural installation of boards covered in ash. It is a work of external facades arranged so as to be impenetrable to the spectator -- alluding to Balka's childhood and adult memories being contained within, and his private world being isolated and not open to clear analysis.

But the heaviness and monumentality found in Balka's installation is not characteristic of this exhibition. It is mostly relaxed and undemanding -- almost fun.

The title "Positioning" refers to the artists maneuvering themselves to get ahead. It is also a marketing strategy for a product -- here, the product is their art. However, middle Europe's contemporary art is probably no longer measurably very distant or qualitatively different from artistic concerns common to European and American models that engage social contexts, commercial culture and gender issues with the mediums of photography, video and installation. Like being absorbed into the EU, the branding slogan for Lakner's biotechnologically designed subterranean spoof, "Eurotrop -- the ideal house plant" (2000), gives the exact metaphor for Mitteleuropean contemporary art -- "conforms to European Standards."