The Sum of all Evil produced by the PinchukArtCentre, is a monumental miniature landscape which is composed of four encased dioramas sited on historical events including the discovery in Babi Yar (1941) of the Ukrainian mass grave where the Nazi occupier executed more than 30,000 Jews in just two days. In addition to this, The Sum of All Evil references Art historical paintings including The Apocalypse by Hieronymus Bosch (1450–1516) and several etchings by Francisco de Goya (1746–1828). It is a sequel to Chapmans’ earlier epic nine-part installations, Hell (1999-2000) and Fucking Hell (2008) - their magnum opuses. Composed of a miniature landscape of concentration camps and mass graves in which thousands of hand-painted Nazi and skeletal soldiers commit murder, torture, rape, abuse and mutilation resulting in a fascinating catalogue of human horror. Ironically enough, the apocalyptic work 'Hell' (1999-2000) was destroyed in a fire in 2004 however, the Chapmans responded with the even larger and more ambitious Fucking Hell (2008).
Among the other key works of the exhibition is the painted bronze sculpture, Sex I (2003) which alludes more directly to the Great Deeds Against the Dead, an original Goya etching from the Disasters of War series. In 1994, the Chapmans had made an eponymous life-size fibreglass reconstruction of this etching. Sex I presents the same scene a number of weeks later: the bodies of the martyrs are in an advanced state of decomposition and covered with hand-painted bronze casts of toy flies and worms. The hardness and naturalism of this scene is ruptured, in typical Chapman fashion, by the clown’s nose, devil horns and ears that the severed head has been given. Although the sculpture depicts death and decay, it carries the title Sex, a reference to the interrelationship between Eros and Thanatos (Love and Death).
The Chapman’s fascination with the work of the Spanish artist is a persistent theme throughout the brothers’ oeuvre. From the Blackened Beyond (2011) is one entire set of Goya 'Disaster of War' etchings that the Chapman's in their own words have 'reworked and improved'.
Also on show are bronze sculptures from The Chapman Family Collection, based on rare ethnographic masks and fetish objects.
Jake Chapman was born in 1966 in Cheltenham and Dinos Chapman in 1962 in London. They live and work in London.
PinchukArtCentre Website
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