Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys
21 Jan - 18 Apr 2015
JOS DE GRUYTER & HARALD THYS
Tram 3
21 January – 18 April 2015
The artists show fifteen new steel sculptures, along with a set of recent drawings, a video, some watercolors, and an organ performance.
These artists make tragic, comic, and silent portraits of the human condition. They are drawn to all that society can’t digest or domesticate, and their work uses the powerless to caricature the powerful. Their sculptures, drawings, and videos are deadpan, in all senses of the word: funny and blank at the same time. They taste like cardboard.
The White Elements combine the weight of a steel statue with the weightlessness of a stick-figure cartoon. The Public Transport drawings depict trams and trolley cars. In the video Die Aap van Bloemfontein [The Ape from Bloemfontein], a voice-over tells the story of Jaap the chicken, who was also a monkey, who had a computer, that was actually a lawnmower, on which he watched TV.
Jos de Gruyter (b. 1965) and Harald Thys (b. 1966) live and work in Brussels. This is their first exhibition in the United States, and will travel to MoMA PS1 in May 2015.
This exhibition is made possible by the government of Flanders, Belgium, through Flanders House New York, with special thanks to Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie and Galerie Micheline Szwajcer.
Tram 3
21 January – 18 April 2015
The artists show fifteen new steel sculptures, along with a set of recent drawings, a video, some watercolors, and an organ performance.
These artists make tragic, comic, and silent portraits of the human condition. They are drawn to all that society can’t digest or domesticate, and their work uses the powerless to caricature the powerful. Their sculptures, drawings, and videos are deadpan, in all senses of the word: funny and blank at the same time. They taste like cardboard.
The White Elements combine the weight of a steel statue with the weightlessness of a stick-figure cartoon. The Public Transport drawings depict trams and trolley cars. In the video Die Aap van Bloemfontein [The Ape from Bloemfontein], a voice-over tells the story of Jaap the chicken, who was also a monkey, who had a computer, that was actually a lawnmower, on which he watched TV.
Jos de Gruyter (b. 1965) and Harald Thys (b. 1966) live and work in Brussels. This is their first exhibition in the United States, and will travel to MoMA PS1 in May 2015.
This exhibition is made possible by the government of Flanders, Belgium, through Flanders House New York, with special thanks to Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie and Galerie Micheline Szwajcer.