JAKE & DINOS CHAPMAN
COME AND SEE
DHC/ART
451 & 465, St-Jean Street - Montreal
4/4/2014 - 31/8/2014
DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art presents Come and See, the first major exhibition in North America by British artists Jake and Dinos Chapman. In collaboration since the 1990s, the Chapmans’ varied and multidisciplinary practice grapples with a wide range of themes including morality, religion, sex, death, philosophy, the history of art, and consumer culture. While provocative and deliberately confrontational, their work is also deeply critical, challenging us to acknowledge what is uncomfortable and messy through irreverence and dark humour.
This large-scale exhibition, displayed in DHC/ART’s two locations, presents a wide survey of the Chapmans’ oeuvre: sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, film, literature, and installation offer a riotous immersion into the horror and hilarity that inhabits their world. On view is Disasters of War IV (2001), one of the artists’ earliest print portfolios, which references Francisco Goya’s famous and critical depiction of war and its atrocities resulting from Napoleon’s occupation of Spain. The Sum of All Evil (2012-13) is the latest monumental iteration of the well-known Hell series of vitrine dioramas, and features apocalyptic landscapes teeming with miniature figures of Nazi soldiers and McDonald’s characters in the throes of grotesque cruelty. The overwhelming scale of these scenes is outdone only by the incredible detail and painstaking labour evident here and in other works by the Chapmans. The Chapman Family Collection (2002) parodies traditional museum displays and ethnographic museal practices. This selection of bronze sculptures merges the fetishization of ethnographic objects with McDonald’s characters—symbols of the commercial world—in order to reveal the underlying hypocrisy of globalization, colonialism, and commercialization.
Named after Elem Klimov’s 1985 film, Come and See provides an opportunity to behold an impressive array of works by these prolific artists. Above all, however, it is an invitation to keep our eyes open, to bear witness, to question and, perhaps, even to delight.
Jake (b. 1966, Cheltenham) and Dinos (b. 1962, London) Chapman were nominated for The Turner Prize in 2003. They have exhibited their work extensively since the 1990s, including recent solo exhibitions at SongEun ArtSpace Museum, Seoul, and PinchukArtCentre, Kiev (both 2013); The Hermitage, St Petersburg (2012); and Tate Liverpool (2006).
Image: Jake and Dinos Chapman, When the world ends, there’ll be no more air. That’s why it’s important to pollute the air now. Before it’s too late. After the end of the world, also, all the technological advances which have been made in this century, which could at this very moment allow a leisure society for all but a few technicians, and a few women with wombs, - so that there will, I mean there could, be no more social class - after the end of this world when humans are no more, the machines for human paradise will run on their own. Just as McDonald’s now runs. (Free Willy), 2012. Fibreglass, plastic and mixed media / 80 11/16 x 50 5/16 x 50 5/16 in. (205 x 127.8 x 127.8 cm) © Jake and Dinos Chapman. Photo: Ben Westoby. Courtesy artists and White Cube
COME AND SEE
DHC/ART
451 & 465, St-Jean Street - Montreal
4/4/2014 - 31/8/2014
DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art presents Come and See, the first major exhibition in North America by British artists Jake and Dinos Chapman. In collaboration since the 1990s, the Chapmans’ varied and multidisciplinary practice grapples with a wide range of themes including morality, religion, sex, death, philosophy, the history of art, and consumer culture. While provocative and deliberately confrontational, their work is also deeply critical, challenging us to acknowledge what is uncomfortable and messy through irreverence and dark humour.
This large-scale exhibition, displayed in DHC/ART’s two locations, presents a wide survey of the Chapmans’ oeuvre: sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, film, literature, and installation offer a riotous immersion into the horror and hilarity that inhabits their world. On view is Disasters of War IV (2001), one of the artists’ earliest print portfolios, which references Francisco Goya’s famous and critical depiction of war and its atrocities resulting from Napoleon’s occupation of Spain. The Sum of All Evil (2012-13) is the latest monumental iteration of the well-known Hell series of vitrine dioramas, and features apocalyptic landscapes teeming with miniature figures of Nazi soldiers and McDonald’s characters in the throes of grotesque cruelty. The overwhelming scale of these scenes is outdone only by the incredible detail and painstaking labour evident here and in other works by the Chapmans. The Chapman Family Collection (2002) parodies traditional museum displays and ethnographic museal practices. This selection of bronze sculptures merges the fetishization of ethnographic objects with McDonald’s characters—symbols of the commercial world—in order to reveal the underlying hypocrisy of globalization, colonialism, and commercialization.
Named after Elem Klimov’s 1985 film, Come and See provides an opportunity to behold an impressive array of works by these prolific artists. Above all, however, it is an invitation to keep our eyes open, to bear witness, to question and, perhaps, even to delight.
Jake (b. 1966, Cheltenham) and Dinos (b. 1962, London) Chapman were nominated for The Turner Prize in 2003. They have exhibited their work extensively since the 1990s, including recent solo exhibitions at SongEun ArtSpace Museum, Seoul, and PinchukArtCentre, Kiev (both 2013); The Hermitage, St Petersburg (2012); and Tate Liverpool (2006).
Image: Jake and Dinos Chapman, When the world ends, there’ll be no more air. That’s why it’s important to pollute the air now. Before it’s too late. After the end of the world, also, all the technological advances which have been made in this century, which could at this very moment allow a leisure society for all but a few technicians, and a few women with wombs, - so that there will, I mean there could, be no more social class - after the end of this world when humans are no more, the machines for human paradise will run on their own. Just as McDonald’s now runs. (Free Willy), 2012. Fibreglass, plastic and mixed media / 80 11/16 x 50 5/16 x 50 5/16 in. (205 x 127.8 x 127.8 cm) © Jake and Dinos Chapman. Photo: Ben Westoby. Courtesy artists and White Cube
