White Cube Hong Kong presents an exhibition of new works by British artists Jake & Dinos Chapman. This is the first exhibition of the artists’ work in China and will feature a major new 'Hell' installation, a group of single dioramas and a new series of ‘reworked’ paintings.

The Chapmans make work that examines cultural and historical stereotypes, using acerbic and surreal humour to question the status quo of hegemonic iconographies. They have described their practice as a way of establishing ‘how and whether we are allowed, or able, to show moral views’ and this exhibition addresses such subjects, challenging collective fears and anxieties through a selection of highly confrontational and culturally dislocating works.

Monumental in scope and minute in detail, The Sum of all Evil (2012-13) occupies the entire ground floor of the gallery and is the most densely imagined diorama installation that the artists have produced to date. The fourth in a series of ‘Hell’ landscapes – the first and most well known of which, Hell (1999), was destroyed in a warehouse fire – the work features a multitude of intricately modelled Nazi soldiers, along with various characters from the fast food chain McDonald's, committing violent, abhorrent acts set amid an apocalyptic landscape within four glass vitrines. Darkly humorous, The Sum of all Evil, as its title suggests, is imaginative rather than descriptive: a summation of all the worst possible 'evils', violence runs amok in a trans-historical and a-temporal arena.

The first floor gallery features four new diorama sculptures which expand on the themes from The Sum of all Evil. In one vitrine, the instantly recognizable, bathetic character of Ronald McDonald is depicted as a melancholic fisherman on a crumbling jetty, his legs peacefully dangling over a lake thickly tangled with dead bodies. In another, a burnt out McDonald’s restaurant appears like a relic of contemporary consumerism, a ghostly reminder of its once ubiquitous global presence.

The exhibition will also include a series of found paintings that the artists have in their words: ‘reworked and improved’. Painted originally by unknown artists, the paintings are either religious in theme or portraits where their defacement is nonetheless subversive, bringing to mind questions of hierarchy, value and context in much the same way as their previous, transgressive reworking of Goya's famous 'Disasters of War' etchings did in the work Insult to Injury (2003).

About the Artists:

Jake Chapman was born in 1966 in Cheltenham, Dinos Chapman in 1962 in London. They live and work in London. They have exhibited extensively, including solo shows at Pinckuk Art Centre, Kiev (2013); The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (2012); Museo Pino Pascali, Polignano a Mare, Italy (2010); Hastings Museum, UK (2009); Kestner Gesellschaft Hannover (2008); Tate Britain, London (2007); Tate Liverpool (2006); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2005); Museum Kunst Palast Düsseldorf (2003); Modern Art Oxford (2003) and PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2000). Group exhibitions include The 1 st Kiev International Biennale (2012); the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2010); Meadows Museum, Texas (2010); ‘Rude Britannia’, Tate Britain (2010); Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn (2010); Hareng Saur: Ensor and Contemporary Art, S.M.A.K, Ghent (2010); National Center of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2009); Kunstverein Hamburg (2009); British Museum, London (2009); Palais des Beaux Arts de Lille (2008); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2008); ICA, London (2008); ‘Summer Exhibition’, Annenberg Courtyard, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2007); ARS 06, Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA, Helsinki (2006) and Turner Prize, Tate Britain (2003). In August 2013 the Chapman brothers will have a solo exhibition at the Song Eun Art Space, Korea.

Image: © Jake & Dinos Chapman

Photo: Ben Westoby

Courtesy of White Cube