Jake and Dinos Chapman are sculptors, printmakers, and installation artists who worked together as a duo for over 30 years. Having graduated from the Royal College of Art in London in 1990, one of the brothers’ first works of notoriety was Disasters of War (1991), a sculpture comprised of reclaimed shop mannequins remodelled and painted to resemble one scene from the Francisco de Goya’s etchings of the same name. Their fourth edition of the work, Disaster of War IV (2001), which sources and subverts the entire series of Goya’s etchings is presented at BAB 2022. 

The work of the Chapman brothers is often darkly humorous, provocative, deliberately puerile, subversive and meticulously made. The artists are cited as describing viewers’ (often awkward) laughter and reaction to their works as more significant than the work itself. Disasters of War (mini Hellscapes) (2018) brings together a group of signature Chapman mannequin-like sculptural works. When combined, these tiny sculptural dioramas recall the chaotically sadistic human landscapes of Flemish 15century painter Hieronymus Bosch. However here, the multitude of murderous protagonists and their hapless victims are replaced with familiar motifs such as nazi iconography and characters from the McDonald’s fast-food lore including, Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar. By blending together the iconography of mass consumption, ideological atrocity and art history, the Chapmans bring both comedy and gravity to their work.

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