Jake & Dinos Chapman
Martin Creed
Shilpa Gupta
Alexander Hoda
Li Yan
Jack Pierson
Nicolas Pol
Shi Jinsong
Sun Yuan
Peng Yu
Christopher Wool
Yin Xiuzhen
13 artists
Allsopp Contemporary and Wedel Fine Art announce a collaborative group show that deals
with fear. Through the works of thirteen established and emerging artists from India, China,
France, the UK and the USA, the exhibition examines differing interpretations of fear, and its
relationship to current global concerns.
Fear of terrorism stalks the 21st century. Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s I am Here shows an
Afghani rifleman peering through a bullet hole in the wall. Whether the perpetrator or the
victim of some act of violence, the gaze instills fear both of the man and the circumstance in
which he finds himself. Yin Xinzhen’s vast patchwork of clothes and fabricated ‘forbidden’
objects in Dangerous Things In Baggage, addresses the repercussions of fear in our everyday
lives and how restrictions are forced upon us. Equally, Shilpa Gupta tackles the culture of fear
that is ever-present on city streets the world over. In a series of prints she documents the
carriage of a suitcase marked with the words “THIS IS NOT AN EXPLOSIVE” through the
streets of London, invoking terror among passers-by.
Jake and Dinos Chapman’s, All Good Things Come To An End, gets down to more gruesome
details. Inviting the viewer to observe a nightmarish scene of bloody war, the work suggests
death, fear and destruction as pre-requisites for the understanding of human existence.
Similarly, Alexander Hoda’s, War Memorial, displays a pile of writhing, drowning animals,
clambering one on top of another. In both works, outlandish scenes of devastation are
graphically depicted so that fear can be realised and thus rationalized.
Shi Jinsong’s, Na Zha Baby Boutique, is a
black steel baby pram that looks more like a
weapon than a pushchair, subverting the notion
of infancy as simple and comfortable. Also
discomforting is Nicolas Pol’s, Collateral
Child Body Bag. Emblazoned with the same
crest that is found on US army coffins, the bag
conjures thoughts of how dead children are
returned from war zones. Though empty, it
represents unrealized fear.
While these works relate to real life events, the
three word pieces by Martin Creed, Jack
Pierson and Christopher Wool that respectively
read, Don’t Worry, Torment and Fear, describe
familiar human responses. They punctuate the
exhibition by re-mystifying fear and anxiety as
abstract human emotions, devoid of cause or
effect.
The exhibition seeks to examine fear in contemporary society, not simply as a collective
condition, but as a personal, often irrational, instinct that is fundamental to who we are and
how we interact with the world around us.
Allsopp Contemporary
8 Conlan St, W10 5AR - London