Artist 14: Jake and Dino Chapman

Actually, I'm not a huge fan of their installations in general. Actually not even their website. I don't mind things that are dark and I can handle a certain amount of vulgarity, but a lot of these installations seem pointlessly dark and vulgar. These artists probably have a good reason for all of that, but I'm not catching on, so they need to work on communicating their message more clearly and toning down the shock value.

So, you might ask, why post about artists that you don't like? I'll tell you why: 50 blog posts due by the end of the summer. But actually there are a few things I noticed about their installations that I did really like. They were just really creative.

Their usual format is to set up a gallery, that looks similar to a regular gallery. They have art framed that seems traditional, but often it is altered at least slightly. (Joker smiles on the faces or cartoon eyes) Then they'll set up another sculptural element to interact with the parodied gallery. These range from a Madonna next to a painting of a naked woman, to Nazis examining a giant wooden dinosaur. Another thing they do is set up the paintings in unconventional ways. For example, they'll have a set of framed images making a stick figure dog on one wall. I like these ideas, but I would probably execute them in a different way.




You can check out their website here if you're dying to see it. I obviously don't particularly recommend it.