Diabolique: A Touch of Evil
Jake and Dinos Chapman War 2004 Courtesy of White Cube London
Twenty international and Canadian artists probe the disturbing, grotesque and downright Machiavellian aspects of war, violence and human conflict in the Dunlop Art Gallery’s latest exhibition, “Diabolique.” Curated by director Amanda Cachia, whose touring “Pandora’s Box” exhibition offers a corrective reading of women’s creative roles, “Diabolique” likewise meditates on mythical and cultural interactions, but instead offers a look at the sinister and often visceral outcomes of these human confrontations.
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William Kentridge What Will Come (Has Already Come) 2007 Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery New York |
In the first instalment of the exhibition, on now, William Kentridge’s What Will Come (Has Already Come), comprised of a film projected onto a cylindrical mirror, depicts eerie hand-drawn figures that transform from benevolent carousel animals into menacing tanks and airplanes. Jake and Dinos Chapman, with characteristic aesthetic extravagance, present War, a ceramic human skull crawling with maggots and flies, while Bogdan Achimescu’s delicate drawings picture more human faces of conflict in *stan. Other projects, such as Douglas Coupland’s larger-than-life toy soldiers and Dan Perjovschi’s cartoon-inspired schematic diagram of modern warfare on the gallery windows, riff on the popularization and commercialization of battle and prompt consideration of our own role and complicity in violent events.
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“Diabolique” 2009 Installation view Courtesy of the Dunlop Art Gallery |
Together with the second half of the exhibition, which opens September 4 and includes artistic luminaries such as Rebecca Belmore, Dana Claxton, Althea Thauberger and Balint Zsako, “Diabolique” will tour to Galerie de l’UQAM in Montreal in 2010 and to the Military Museums in Calgary in 2011. Wherever it is shown, the show is sure to make for a compelling examination of our changing attitudes towards war and human violence. (2311 12 Ave, Regina SK)
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