Translated material
The end of the fun
The Hermitage shows one of the most scandalous exhibitions of the year
The composition "End of fun (hell)." Fragment
Brothers Jake and Dinos Chepmens are radical artists. Their theme is torture, sadism, racism, the horrors of war. They appeal to the “disasters of the war” by Francisco Goya, but use the style of the mass poult, ironically rethinking terrible images. In the UK, their work has repeatedly aroused a scandal: the artists' interest in bodily ugliness and mental extremes - they started from this - was perceived as a mockery of the public.
The Hell's composition is exhibited in the Hermitage. Since this is not the first “hell” that they made-the first burned down, the second they sold the famous collector Francois Pino-then this one had to be called differently, “the end of fun”. Four large layouts depict something like a tropical island that is entirely busy with a Nazi concentration camp. In this camp there are killings and torture, miniature plastic figures do not hit their lives, but for death, an awesome species, soldiers fight against naked people and mutants. The Hitler factory is also working there - these Hitlers on armored personnel carriers and tanks shoot, torment, hang, crucify on crosses. A hyperrealistic picture is like a scenes of a terrible dream, and at the same time it looks like a children's railway, which are sold in large supermarkets, or to a busy puppet town somewhere on the edge of the lake or in the mountains. And to someone it all resembles computer games, where endless violence is also happening on a microscopic scale.
"
Our Soviet stomachs, accustomed to digesting liquid gruel of socialist realism, can not always cope with such an art
"
Usually the miniature world is pretty and pleasant, but here it is terrible. People are so accustomed to the plot structures operated by TV, cinema, electronic toys, which no longer perceives atrocities as something threatening them, their own life. Comments have no moralization, but the amount of savagery in this puppet world is such that after some time it begins to overwhelm you, you feel physiological horror. Moreover, this is not Pelevin psychedelic fantasy, not a hallucination of human toxic mushrooms, not a world of dreams. Artists are starting from the real practice of tortures, which other people subjected people in the 20th century. It is clear that this is a huge metaphor, a generalized image of mankind, which came to a parallel, covered by wars and self -torture by society. Maybe a portrait of the entire twentieth century, a warning to today's world.
Our Soviet stomachs, accustomed to digesting liquid gruel of socialist realism, cannot always cope with such an art. Surprisingly, literature does not cause such rejection in our country, we can consume any, even the most incomprehensible, terrible, monstrous text. But our viewer reacts sharply to such visual images, he immediately stands on his hind legs. Although such a reaction should arrange artists - the shocking is designed. But the Hermitage is now pursuing a competent policy, gradually accustoming our viewer to modern art level art. Within the framework of the project “Hermitage 20/21”, exhibitions of an outstanding Spanish artist and architect Santiago Calatrava, British sculptor-postmodernist Anthony Gormley, our Dmitry Prigov were held here. There are not so many artists such as the Buildings addressing taboo topics, therefore it is very correct that Petersburg decided to show us one of their most fundamental works.
Jake and Dinos Chepmens are English conceptual artists. Belong to the famous group "Young British Artists." Their most famous installations are the “horrors of war” (1993), “Evil Acceleration: Biogenetic Designed Libidonal Model” (1995), “Acts for the Dead” (1995), “Hell” (2000), “Death” (2003). In Russia, they are exhibited for the first time. Exhibition "Jake and Dinos Chepmena. The end of the fun ”is open in St. Petersburg, in the Hermitage, in the restored premises of the General Staff. The curator is Dmitry Ozerkov.
Photo: press service of the Hermitage Museum