Jake and Dinos Chapman “Insult to Injury”
Yoshii Gallery
This event has ended.
“Policing the ‘Disasters’ moral injustices, humanist critique will methodically exorcise Goya’s evil from the semi-automatic stutter that scars each of the eighty copper plates with indelible signs of auto-eroticism – even Goya’s fetishized identity must surrender to the moral framework enclosing the ‘Disasters’ itinerant slippages… It is not violence that initiates the causal mechanism, but, as Nietzsche observes, ‘the translation of reality into a morality’ … the Gothic reclamation of Goyaesque horror is evidence of a rare acerbic wit which deserves profound compliment …”
Excerpt from “Insult to Injury: the Marriage of Reason and Squalor” by Jake Chapman
Yoshii Gallery presents “Insult to Injury”, the original Francisco de Goya’s ‘Disasters of War’ prints reworked and improved by Jake and Dinos Chapman. The complete set of 80 etchings will be presented in the US for the first time, and it is their first exhibition with the gallery.
Too controversial and unpatriotic to be shown in Goya’s lifetime, the first ever edition of ‘Disasters of War’ was posthumously released in 1863. Enfants terribles of British art, the Chapman brothers acquired one of the few remaining sets of the ‘Disasters of War’ prints in 2001, published directly from Goya’s original plates in 1937, as part of their continuous fascination with Goya’s work.
In this the Chapman brothers deals with daunted, grotesque, and cruel themes from Spanish civil war distilling them into vandalized, victimized consequences. By changing all the visible faces of victims to heads of clowns and puppies, these imaginary characters of ambiguous origin burst in vibrant red, violet and white, and thus emotionally resonate with the rich, historic underlayer by Goya. They are no longer silent or hostile, but rather open to the divergent, worthwhile discussions that are put upon, ordered around, or presented against them. Each plate never forfeits its lyrical sense of mystery or visceral emotional punch, escaping the factual and present characters, which reveal awful, astonishing view of the commonplace. They capture how the figures, transformed by idealism and by context, possess cartoon-like qualities and new meanings in their present state. Diverse as characters shown in the work, these humorously recognizable members of the masses are exonerated.
Jake Chapman was born in 1966 and Dinos Chapman in 1962. They both graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1990 and currently live and work in London. The Chapman brothers’ work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at prominent venues internationally, including Chicken, Pinchuk Art Center, Klev (2013); The Hermitage, St. Petersburg (2012); Museo Pino Pascali, Polignano a Mare, Italy (2010); Hastings Museum, UK (2009); Kestner Gesellschaft Hannover (2008); Tate Britain, London (2007); Tate Liverpool (2006); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2005); Modern Art Oxford (2003) and PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2000), among others.
[Image: Jake and Dinos Chapman “Sad presentiments of what must come to pass” (2003) 9 5/8 x 13 9/16 in.]
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Schedule
from May 01, 2013 to June 29, 2013