Irreverent Duo

A dark wooden frame, ornately carved, hangs on one of the polished marble walls in the Triumph gallery. The painting depicts a monk in brown robes, a skull resting on the pages of a manuscript at his elbow. Dimly visible in the background is a Crucifixion scene.

But extraneous elements in the painting alert viewers that the work has been recently touched up. Although completely integrated with the technique of the work, the man's head sprouts a bulging eyeball, veins sit close to the skin's surface, and his mouth, nose and chin have blurred into a sinister lump. A serpent's tongue protrudes from the face, hovering menacingly beside Jesus Christ's loincloth.

"I don't see anything in here that would offend the Church," Jake Chapman, one half of the Chapman Brothers, said with a twinkle in his eye.

The Chapmans like to offend. Even at a time when audiences barely blink at works such as Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" -- a photograph of a crucifix in a glass of the artist's urine -- the Chapmans take shock to a new level. In 2001, the brothers bought 80 etchings by Francisco Goya titled "The Disasters of War." They painted clown heads and puppies on top of the tortured bodies for a 2003 exhibition at Modern Art Oxford titled "The Rape of Creativity."

"We like to make a new body of work for every exhibition. It's not geographically orientated, but we add something each time we display the works," said Jake Chapman, seated next to his brother Dinos at the bar of the Triumph gallery on Monday.

Vladimir Filonov / MT The two-headed figure was created in 1997.

For Russia, the siblings took some 19th-century paintings that they had bought at flea markets and antique stores and painted over them. The results are grotesque: The face of a young woman seems to have melted below her left eye and her lip is turned down in a grimace; an elderly lady in a bonnet has a protruding tongue and a row of very sharp teeth; and a man regally seated in black coat and white shirt looks as if he lost a layer of skin to burns.

The paintings have been aged to match the style of the original work. The paint flakes off evocatively and implies that the vile features were part of the paintings long ago.

It takes a surprisingly long time," Jake Chapman said of the technique. "It's tricky trying to balance the picture into the painting," Dinos Chapman said.

Displayed in the same room, illuminated by a gold, circular chandelier, is a doll with two heads in a glass case. Aged so the paint and plastic veneer are peeling off, the brunette girl stands with hand on hip, her fingers balled in a determined fist. Joined to her head by a vagina is an identical face with an equally indifferent expression.

Asked how the artists want people to react to their work, and whether they intend to shock, Jake Chapman recoiled slightly. "Shock is a cheap way of defying the complexity of the work," he said. "Reaction is a bad word, because it kind of presumes that the work of art has a very quick temporal purpose. I think works of art are inherently difficult to look at. I think they demand a long time, not an immediate response."

Triumph Gallery The chess set comes from 2003.

"The Chapmans' "View of Hell" series, displayed on an elaborate wooden table in a room with rich maroon walls, are miniature sculptures showing scenes of devastation. Bleeding bodies in Nazi uniforms are either being killed, dead or already decomposing. Their heads are speared, their limbless bodies hang suspended from trees and their tiny skulls are scattered carelessly.

The brothers are probably best-known for their "Fuckface" sculptures of a Pinocchio-like character with a penis for a nose and an anus for a mouth. In Moscow they are showing one bronze knee-high sculpture that stands innocently in a smock. The Chapmans gave it toddlerlike proportions and did not omit small details such as the Velcro straps on its sneakers.

Triumph Gallery This 2007 work was created for Moscow.

A chess set contains figures that have the same features as "Fuckface." On one side, the black pieces have wild Afro hair and dark, nude bodies. The knight pieces are piggybacking each other, their eyes rolled back. On the other side, blonde girls with long straight hair in neatly tied gold ribbons stand in matching poses.

"People still hark on about the dolls even though they are 10 years old," Jake Chapman said of the "Fuckface" figures. "After we do one technique, we like to work on something different," Dinos Chapman said. "When we finished one of our sculpture series, we got a whole bag of tools together and threw them out."

At the news conference the brothers were asked what can be expected of them in the future. "I don't know how to answer that question. Maybe more of the same," Dinos Chapman said, looking toward his brother. "I don't know. Maybe in 10 years time we will be painting butterflies and puppies," Jake Chapman replied.



"Jake and Dinos Chapman" runs to Dec. 27 at Triumph gallery, located at 40 Novokuznetskaya Ulitsa. Metro Paveletskaya. Tel. 660-1156.