HELL’O MONSTERS first show in Copenhagen.
Opening: Friday 28.10.2011 at 16 to 21
Closing: 26.11.2011
@
Mohs Exhibit
Sdr. Boulevard 98
1720 Copenhagen V – Denmark
Hell’O Monsters is a Belgian collective formed by Jérôme Meynen, François Dieltiens and Antoine Detaille . The three artists successfully blend their individual styles to create an imaginary universe occupied by hybrid characters such as monsters with multiple eyes, mutated animals, humans with their heads split open. These figures manage to grab our attention and gain our affection despite their r…evolting appearance. In addition to the ink drawings and the paintings, the Hell’O Monsters universe breaks away from the wall and these miniature extra-ordinary beings suddenly occupy the exhibition space. The group’s creations, despite their colorful and happy look, are in fact caustic commentaries on the adult world, human nature and society.
As an introduction to «The Book of Imaginary Beings» , Borges wrote that’ a monster is nothing more than a combination of real human being part’s and that ‘their combinative possibilities border on infinity’ .
A few sentences beforehand, he had noted that when a child is taken to a zoo for the firt time, «he is faced for the first time with the multiplicity of the animal kingdomand, unexpectedly, really enjoys what could be nothing more than a horrifying or alarming spectacle to him»
even is stated from a trivial text, these two facts prove to be two quite practical windows to approach the formal world of Hell’O Monsters: a universe of monsters that form and re-form themselves, according to the adventures they are faced with. Indeed, the Hell’O Monsters do not escape the Argentine writer’s comments.
And the fact they are made up of so clearly recognisable element is the verry reason why we are troubled to this extent. At the same time so similar and so different to us, their creatures give substance to our fantasies, even in the playfull and cutting manner adopted by these artists.
In tune with their time, the Hell’O Monsters have perfectly grasped that today monsters can be tamed, that they have become kind, play with the very young, wink to television programmes, and even lie on the internet
As all their brothers and even very distant cousins, their creatures are never passive; they live adventures the artists compress in each of their creation «pregnant instants» , to use lessing’s expression. Mreover, narrative frames are precise and rich.
Why? Well, just because those imaginary beings, born of the fine srokes and graphic fantasy of these three artists, are similar to their many predecessors and tend to crystallise the fears and desires of the men who created them. These mixed fears and desires that childrens feel so intensely, the Hell’O Monsters have never lost the thread of his creative wonder of childhood . Their creatures first offer to ‘teach us how to look at them in the face and so, while being confronted with them, how to dare to live and dream absolutely freely’.
More info:
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I’ll post pictures from the exhibition this weekend…
