BORN TO BE A MANIAC
Skwak
Exhibition from January 29th to April 8th 2008
Opening saturday January 25th 2008 18:00 - 21:00
Exhibition from January 28th to April 8th, 2008
Tuesday - Saturday 11:00 - 7:00
download the flyer
Both
an opening to this New Year and a gift, you are offered a unique incursion in a
space like none, Skwak’s, or rather
the one of his “Maniacs”, the
characters both funny and frightening that colonize his universe. Besides,
the inhabitants of the "Maniac World"
show ostentatiously a monstrous smile that seems particularly ambiguous,
because we can’t really know if they are actually trying to appeal to us or if
they are coaxing us into loving them. If this parallel world seems abounding,
colourful and entertaining at first, it soon turns out sweltering and suffocating.
Actually,
what we see is a contaminated and spoiled planet, populated by the “Maniacs”, degenerated humans, as
touched by a mysterious scourge that makes them more and more vicious, more and
more calculating, more and more unsound, more and more awful. Fearing neither
God nor man, they weave a society racked by overconsumption, overabundance, and
abuse while evolving in Skwak’s
compositions, as chaotic as them because of this profusion of elements and
colours. Both wonderful and oppressive, the “Maniac World” is the
product of its inhabitants, polluted by all kinds of aggressions and
degradations which motto is: “always more”:
always more money, more sex, more power. But this world appears enchanting as
well, as the Maniacs bask in
colonizing it and keep it in its own decay: for them, it’s nothing but
heaven. It’s the reason why Skwak’s canvases are so vivid and
attractive, as pleasant as a Toys’Rus invaded by the Grimlins.
The Maniacs work out their annihilation
through degeneration and excess, cultivating agony and degradation, practicing
plastic surgery to reach perfection in deformity, corruption to be richer and
more powerful. They just want more and more in all.
Skwak
tells the story of this community through his canvases reminding of Aboriginal
paintings thanks to their brilliance, their visual intensity, all over the
framework full with this mass of elements and characters.
Masters
such as Combas or Haring also influence the artist.
For
his first personal exhibition at ADDICT
Galerie, Skwak proposes “Born
to be a Maniac”: this is the genesis to the History of the Maniacs, a developing species.
As
an artistic birth, Skwak intends to
infiltrate these specimens in order to reveal the Maniac nature.“Doom Generation” by Greg Araki, Britney
Spears’ last video clip, a reality show and a bit of TV news, Skwak get his inspiration from the
screens and the contemporary world. Transposing the activities of everyday life
in this parallel sphere, he depicts how ridiculous, asphyxiated and imprisoned
we are as a vision of our own world.
We
already know the “Maniac World” in
3D; it would not be impossible to get it animated. Any similarity to persons
living or dead is purely coincidental, of course.