Jake & Dinos Chapman Hell+Works

Jake and Dinos Chapman make iconoclastic sculpture, prints and installations that examine, with searing wit and energy, contemporary politics, religion and morality.
Working together since their graduation from the Royal College of Art in 1990, the Chapmans first received critical acclaim in 1991 for a diorama sculpture entitled 'Disasters of War' created out of remodelled plastic figurines enacting scenes from Goya's 'Disasters of War' etchings. Later they took a single scene from the work and meticulously transformed it into a Great Deeds Against the Dead (1994), a life-size tableau of reworked fibreglass mannequins depicting three castrated and mutilated soldiers tied to a tree.
Arguably their most ambitious work was Hell (1999), an immense tabletop tableau that was destroyed by fire in 2004. The work was peopled with over 30,000 remodelled, 2-inch-high figures, many in Nazi uniform and performing egregious acts of cruelty. The work combined historical, religious and mythic narratives to present an apocalyptic snapshot of the twentieth-century. The Chapman Family Collection (2002) comprised a group of sculptures that bring to mind the loot from a Victorian explorer's trophy bag, yet many also portray characters from McDonald's. The conflation of the exotic fetish and the cheap fast-food giveaway, imperialism and globalisation, created a powerful sense of dislocation. Their most recent White Cube show, 'Like A Dog Returns To Its Vomit' (2005), was an exhibition of the Chapmans' graphic works, a large collection of etchings and drawings displayed on two walls and arranged in the shape of dogs. Many of the works were reinterpretations of Goya etchings, including the 'Disasters Of War' and 'Los Caprichos' series.
Jake Chapman was born in 1966 in Cheltenham, Dinos Chapman in 1962 in London. They live and work in London. They have exhibited extensively, including solo shows at Tate Liverpool (2006) Kunsthaus Bregenz (2005), Museum Kunst Palast Düsseldorf (2003) and Modern Art Oxford (2003). Group exhibitions have included ARS 06, Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA, Helsinki, the Turner Prize, Tate Britain (2003) and PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2000).
http://www.whitecube.com/artists/chapman/

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Jake
• Dinos
• Chapman
• Hell+Works
• art
• arte
• kunts
• music
• Bauhaus
• Paranoia

[cobralondon]

brilliant music to hilariously awesome art

[dannyofthededd]

the music went well..it was spooking me through the headphones..i could look at the hell diorama for hours..it's so detailed and gory. want to go and see fucking hell.

i used to do stuff like that.fucking about with plastic model kits.

i also like the altered goya stuff and the old portraits..i think more people should consider taking themselves less seriously..the world would be a finer place.

great reflection on the human being shines out of their werk

[yudoyoko]

pure hell ...loving it!

[BTC141]

I'm loving it.

[Withnail1969]

One reason I like them is because I used to do loads of battle scenes/dioramas with model soldiers, particularly Germans.

That's why their piece Hell with thousands of Nazis ruled forever for me!

[crazzydeano]

FUCKING FREAKS

[MOBRIEN1234567]

McDonald's is the striking (new, i think) content in the work in relation to the theme of hell

[2V01D2]

Industrial records did this mixture of facism, porn and satanism back in the 70's. NOthing new really...

[FriendLondonFriend]

Dear Sammy,

Thanks for sending me the data; here with something from White Cube (London SW1), go there soon hey!

D

[blancaoraa]

impresionante, alucinante, demasiado duro para mi.