Jake and Dinos Chapman - Fucking Hell - 2008

Jake And Dinos Chapman - Fucking Hell

Rare

Published on September 1st, 2008 by White Cube

175 pages

Formed at the Royal College of Art in London and by the photographers Gilbert & Georges, for whom they long worked as assistants, the Chapman duo stood out from their beginnings in the world of sculpture and contemporary visual arts. With Disasters of War (1991), a bipartite work completed in 2003, they satirically revisit the eponymous drawings by Francisco Goya by covering the faces of soldiers with clown masks. Works like this one or Fuck Face (1996), a series of fiberglass sculptures depicting children whose noses have been replaced by a penis, quickly establish them as the enfant terrible of British contemporary art.

Like Samuel Beckett, one of their acknowledged influences, the Chapmans do not believe in progress or humanism. However, unlike the writer, they have decided, instead of devoting their career to silence, to say as much as possible, among other things with large-scale works. The best known of these is Hell (2000), the first maquette in a series of four, in which more than 30,000 figures, Nazi soldiers in uniform, are shown committing acts of extreme violence. This ambitious sculpture had to be replaced in 2008, following a fire that completely destroyed it. Fucking Hell, the new version, is larger and even more brutal. In an interview given to White Cube, Jake Chapman explains that the work, like many of their creations, responds to the human need to validate social boundaries and behaviors through art.