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25 January 2009 | |
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TOYGIANTS German photographers Daniel & Geo Fuchs are currently showing a series of photos entitled TOYGIANTS at the Young Gallery in Brussels. As the point of departure for their photo series TOYGIANTS, Daniel and Geo Fuchs use the, to a certain extent, highly political world of toy figures, which are sold and traded internationally. The artists created portraits of toys in large-sized prints: American comic heroes of the 1960s; muscle-bound fantasy figures; Japanese Manga superstars; actors and directors such as Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, and Quentin Tarantino; even world-leaders such as George W. Bush and his opponent Saddam Hussein; or artists such as Andy Warhol who are presented as "toys". They began their work on TOYGIANTS with Batman, Superman and Hulk. The belief in progress is written on the faces of these figures, as is the idealism with which comic heroes are charged. How different the worn-out and spent faces of Willis or Stallone, a soldier of the Cold War era for whom it seems no task remains. And the borders between reality and fiction disappear completely when the portraits of figures of Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden are shown. At the centre of the exhibition are questions regarding the power of self-promotion through the media by political figures or actors in a networked world of entertainment and "war games". The iconographic strategies of a president climbing out of a fighter plane equipped with military gear are scrutinised by the artists in their photograph of an originally packaged George W. Bush. They leave the interpretation of the empty, pale-white faces to the visitor: what is real and what is staged? Read more and see lots more pics here. The images are at once pop culture and seemingly void of meaning, but the compositions, context, and the fact that they groupig of the photos into a show indicate something altogether different. TOYGIANTS |
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