JAKE & DINOS CHAPMAN EXHIBITION

THE SAATCHI GALLERY ANNOUNCES JAKE & DINOS CHAPMAN EXHIBITION

The Saatchi Gallery has announced that it will be opening an exhibition of the major works made by the Chapman Brothers over the last decade. The show opens on Wednesday 1 October. A private view will be held on Tuesday 30 September.

The show will feature their key works including:

Hell - Comprised of nine large vitrines, the Chapmans’ Hell is a hobbyists’ Apocalypse, which took the artists two years to make. Hundreds of tiny trees and rocks bought from model shops make up perfectly miniaturised landscapes inhabited by over 5000 figures (each one cast and hand painted). By reconstructing hell on earth in miniature, they replicate the detached experience of watching real evil through the compact window of a television screen. The Chapmans place the viewer in the position of ruthless gods, looking on with awe and wonder at the destruction they’ve willed.
Great Deeds Against the Dead - It’s hardly surprising that the Chapmans would choose as their mentor the 19th century Spanish painter Francesco Goya, whose works became progressively tortured through his dementia-infused demise. Great Deeds is a sculptural interpretation of one of Goya’s etchings: a life-sized tree hung with dismembered mannequins. The Chapmans’ literally play with history; they remake it in plastic, like a big toy.
Chapman Family Collection - Consists of 34 tribal fetishes, displayed in Victorian museum fashion. These totems look like C19th. imperialist trophies from the extermination of an ancient race. More disturbing still; on closer inspection all the carvings oddly look like stuff from McDonald’s.
Zygotic Acceleration - A team of pre-teen ‘girls’ osmose and melt into each other, creating a single hermaphroditic torso. All similar, but inherently unique, their faces (some angelic, others distorted like porn blow up dolls) stare out at us. This is the world of department store mannequins where genital-less bodies wear black Fila trainers.
DNA Zygotic - The Chapmans’ sculptures of mutated children are possible by-products of gene tampering, nuclear spills, or cloning experiments gone horribly awry. Whatever the evil, it’s not the children’s’ fault: they’re placid, angelic creatures who seem to take no notice that they have four legs, or twelve heads, or genitals for a face. If they’re disturbing, that’s the viewer’s hang-up. The children themselves seem to relish their strange beauty, know that they’re one-of-a-kinds: each one having been made by hand in the artists’ studio.

Tragic Anatomies - An artificial Eden constructed from Astroturf and catalogue-order plastic plants, populated by conjoined nymphs designed for the sole purpose of sexual gratification. This isn’t Hieronymus Bosch does Genesis, but rather two men dreaming up the beginning of the world as they would have preferred it.
Disasters of War - Goya’s Disasters Of War etchings capture every horror imaginable; they show the real-life hell of war. The Chapmans’ meticulously hand tinted etchings recreate their version of Disasters of War in high-school-drop-out style. Delinquently scratched like toilet stall graffiti, their images are comic depictions of terror, reminiscent of heavy metal album covers.

Jake & Dinos Chapman will follow the Damien Hirst exhibition, which closes on 21 September 2003. The Hirst show has attracted over 300,000 visitors to date. Key pieces by Hirst will remain on permanent view at the gallery like the Shark, the Sheep, Hymn (the 20ft anatomical figure) and Love Lost (an aquarium with live fish swimming in a gynaecologist’s office) and 1000 Years, the life and death cycle of flies.

In addition to the Chapman Brothers, visitors can see iconic works by Tracey Emin, Jenny Saville, Sarah Lucas, Ron Mueck, Chris Ofili, Gavin Turk and Richard Wilson’s oil installation – 20:50.

A separate exhibition in the Boiler Room, a showcase for new talent, will feature the sculpture of Rebecca Warren, an exciting new British star. She will be showing seven large scale sculptures in unfired clay that make-up a single work called She.

To coincide with the exhibition, Jonathan Cape are publishing ‘HELL’ a book that features the major works by the Chapman Brothers that will be seen at the gallery.

The Saatchi Gallery now opens till 8.00pm every night with two late nights on Friday and Saturday when the gallery remains open until 10.00pm.

The Gallery has attracted a wide cross-section of visitors, evenly split between under 35’s and over 35’s. The majority of visitors are not necessarily ‘art enthusiasts’ and for many this will have been an introduction to contemporary art.

Over 70 schools from the UK and abroad have already made visits to the gallery.

www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk

Further information:
Lisa Baker (07768 310038) or Will Paget (07989 301610) at PagetBaker PR
Tel: +44 (0)20 7289 4440/
Email: lisa@pagetbaker.com