UTA Artist Space is pleased to announce the opening of its third exhibition, To Live and Think Like Pigs. This show will include recent works by world-renowned artists Jake and Dinos Chapman. The work of the Chapman brothers has been long polarizing audiences, critics and collectors internationally, but this is the first time it will be exhibited in Los Angeles. The show will present a recent series of paintings, drawings, sculpture, and video compositions.
Given our country’s current state of political unrest, the timing of the exhibition seems particularly pertinent. Typical of their anti-aesthetic, as it is sometimes referred to, the Chapman brothers will shock viewers with compositions that question religious beliefs, moral standards, and political tradition. Their presentation seeks to both question and highlight the gluttonous swine that breeds with supporters of the status quo.
Nodding to darker themes, we see motifs that highlight human decay, Nazi war crimes, Satanism, and the perversion of political conflict. Upon entering the space, audiences will encounter the artists’ Victorian portrait series – subjects’ faces are exposed in a process of decomposition, highlighting human impermanence and our ultimate migration into the forgotten.
Also on view, are “Disasters of War IV”, and “Human Rainbow II”. Both series examine themes drawn from the Second World War – the first, prints inspired by Goya’s infamous depiction of the Peninsular War, and the second, hand-colored etchings born from darker imagery such as Hitler’s art school watercolors or a book cover on Satanism.
Further in the exhibition, visitors will find one of the brothers’ infamous “Hellscapes” – an unsettling diorama that marries comedy with horror. Here, crucified Ronald McDonalds tower over a devastating pile of bodies, suggesting the evils of capitalism.
To Live and Think Like Pigs forces viewers to confront the carnage of industrialism, doom of globalization, and depreciation of culture — it’s a prophetic portrait of the modern era.
About Jake and Dinos Chapman
Jake Chapman was born in 1966 in Cheltenham, Dinos Chapman in 1962 in London. They have been working as a pair since their graduation from the Royal College of Art in 1990. The Chapman brothers have exhibited internationally, with recent solo exhibitions at Brandts Museum (2015) Odense, Jerwood Gallery, Hastings (2014); Serpentine Sackler Gallery, DHC Montreal (2013); Pinchuk Art Centre (2013); and the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (2012), among many others. Recent group exhibitions include Sleepless, 21er Haus (2015); Sculpture in the City, London (2013); the 1st Kiev Biennale (2012); the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011); 17th Biennale of Sydney (2010); Meadows Museum, Texas (2010); ‘Rude Britannia’, and Tate Britain (2010), among others.