POP 800 Monday 16 January 2012

Today's POP is Stephanie with Dinos at Dover Street. 

 

 
When we heard there was going to be a Chapman brother doing a book signing for the span of 1 hour at Dover Street Market on a Saturday we jumped, and fast.

And there he was: one half of the scarily satirical duo, parked in the middle of DSM's menswear floor signing copies of Flogging a Dead Horse, a retrospective of the brother’s work thus far.

If you’d seen their most recent exhibition at the White Cube last year, you’ll recognize the child-like cardboard cut-outs that have taken up space in the

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shop’s front windows and sit beneath a pair of Nazi flags on which swastikas have been replaced by horrifying smileys. Leave it to the Chapman’s to put you in the mood for shopping…

POP sat down with Dinos for a quick few to ask about the brothers’ work (both separate and together), paintballing, and the current apocalypse.

Where did your obsession with Nazi’s and Holocaust derive from?

We’re not obsessed with Nazi’s. The reason we use Nazi’s is because everyone knows what they are; in the same way we’re using McDonald’s, because everybody knows what McDonald’s is. They’re very over-used, worn-out symbols. I imagine If you said to anybody in the world “what is a symbol of evil?”, they’d say a Nazi or a swastika. You’d say “what’s a symbol of global capitalism?” they’d say McDonalds. So we sort of use symbols, like the red, etc…

Is it more of a comment on then or now?

Neither. You know people get confused. Some people don’t see beyond the initial limits. When you see a sculpture with 10,000 Nazis being tortured – and also there’s mutants, skeletons and spaceman – people immediately ignore all the other stuff and say, “this is about the Nazi’s”… Well, it’s a little bit about that, but it’s really also about genetic engineering, you know, it’s everything… The thing is with Hell, it’s just sort of a big pool that you can throw everything into and whatever people see in it is their responsibility. 
 
Obviously your choice and use of materials is significant. How do you choose your materials and why?
 
We choose whichever materials are necessary to execute our ideas. We don’t specialize in a single medium; we work with various forms. So we will do whatever we need to do in order to use the material that our idea or message requires of us.
 
 
Where do you situate yourself within art history?

I don’t consider us as part of any particular movement, even though we are categorized within a certain period. The 90’s was a great moment in Britain to be a young artist. That’s really it.  But that’s not our job; there are people who do that.

Since your separation from one another last year in preparation for your joint exhibition, how do you feel your experience working together has changed?

The separation was an exercise only to make the new work be different to the previous. But the funny thing is we may as well have been together for the entire time because the work looked like it had been made by both of us. And we actually didn’t see each other’s work; I’m sure people don’t believe it…

You produce apocalyptic visions in apocalyptic times. Is this intentional?
 
That's exactly it. People ask, “why are you obsessed with death and destruction?”. Well what else is there?

A woman getting her copy of Flogging a Dead Horse signed by Dinos says: “What about Birth and Life?”

Everything that’s born dies. I just think if you look at work made in the 15th century, it’s fairly apocalyptic because it was a product of its time; and work made in the 70’s was all about peace and love, etc.
 
You can only make the work that asks to be made. So you’re not really in control of what you make. You are part of a machine. You’re part of a machine that at the moment demands that Jake & I make this stuff. And Jake and I always have conversations like “Wouldn’t it be nice to make some minimal sculptures?”

 
 

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And it’s not the moment…
 
What we create is completely dictated to us.

What do you have coming up?

We’re working on this McDonald’s project and we’re creating a new film.

Final Question: who would win in a paintball match between The Chapman Brothers and Fischli & Weiss?

Hoahhhh. Jake just got 2 paintball guns for Christmas and I got a quadbike. So we’re thinking paint guns and quadbikes… We’re extremely competitive; so we would definitely win.
About this Pop

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Published:
16.01.12 / 6am
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ART, FASHION, POP OF THE DAY
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