In place of a typical description Jake & Dinos Chapman have included a poem alongside the launch of their new edition Who's Afraid Of Red, White And Black? A 10-minute video piece drawn from three separate screens, this self-referential piece encapsulates the raw, emotional power of the Chapman brother's work, and is perfectly captured - in mood and intensity - by the poem.
- Under the magic ascendancy
- of scribble and the crushing
- opposable-thumb a hunter
- with an ogre-like head
- poached by a rabid dog
- emerging from a dark cave
- snapping at the hand
- whose savaged imprint
- reappears in a cave in Castillo
- with two hundred mutilated
- hands at Gargas to ward off
- evil eye-sockets wearing
- a magical diamante collar
- of the Aurignacian period
- threading fangs of slain prey
- sucking plasma of sacrificial
- animal’s bones hand-carved
- by deft artisans into magical cattle-prod
- which matches the perspectival
- size and shape of one of the
- Easter-egg Island petroglyph shells
- decorated in the background
- carved from volcanic lava
- rolled over wooden logs
- to propriate the spirits of the dead
- mummified remains painted
- in crude-oil trompe l’oil foreground
- rock crystal skull glows
- radiating light through
- a thin grey skin wash - yet behold!
- to the left of the camp commandant
- wrapped in barbed wire
- chained to a wooden scaffold
- a captured teddybear is mocked
- by nomadic Ghiliak tribes
- before they gorge themselves
- on its tortured fun-fur’s
- Passing Iglukik female demon
- goes off in search of game
- from the mother of all sea animals
- Enclosed inside a pack of ice
- which melts in summer she
- falls and loses consciousness
- on the mountain being unable
- to recover until a beneficent dog
- has licked her frozen heart warm.
- Mummy Pynry-Wayrgyn lives in the moon
- squeezing fish and sea-creatures
- from her nipple which swim towards
- sinister fishing nets –
- the sinister spirit of nervous maladies
- the spirit of epilepsy,
- the spirit of St.Tourette
- the spirit of ether or opium
- the spirit of vacuum packing
- the spirit of the industrial machine-gun machine
- the spirit of the looming Jacquard loom
- the assistant spirits of the Tunguska
- shaman’s felt-tip circle weaving
- the mandalas of the Hindus
- the zodiacal plans of pre-Colombians
- and clenched solar beams
- squeezed through the cathedral’s
- clenched petal aperture
- filling the vestibule
- with debauched lapping
- buttresses of choir boys
- whispering in the shower
- attendant’s ear a shaman
- from Tunguska clothed
- in the death's head
- insignia of his succession
- exorcising his priesthood
- in the midst of a people who look
- upon their abnormalities as the cracks
- through which unseen powers manifest themselves
- A host of ancestors sapping the fear
- of fruitless love borne in the name of
- the departed, the benevolent or terrifying
- of ancestral figurens carved
- in a railway transit of logs and rags
- The remembrance of the dead
- in New Guinean earthen-ware parties
- An inomminate skull upholstered
- with the skin of an ancestor
- whose virtues they wish to preserve
- for themselves and their descendants
- a snake standing up like a cock’s comb
- or jester’s hat on the head
- of a long-eared devil from a Bolivian
- tourist casting spells with Congolese nails
- while Enguerrand de Marigny
- is hung at Montfaucon for casting a spell
- on Louis X’s papier-mâché effigy
- hung on a miniature wooden gibbet
- A glassy obsidian Luger pistol
- studded with pearls and precious stones
- dedicated to Huitzilopochtli
- sits in its leather holster
- symbol of the metaphysical objective
- behind ritual holocaust reflects
- the belief in the necessity of assimilating
- those forces which having left the dead
- will come to inhabit the body of the excutant –
- all seven million of them
- and staring out into the black bitumen
- tongue flashes of superheated gas
- warp away from the turbulent corona
- of the moon-sun,
- compressed helium ignitions
- arcing back into superviolent gravity...
