18/10/2025
Jake & Dinos Chapman
Explaining Christians to Dinosaurs, 2005
Etching on rag paper
Signed and numbered
40 x 50 cm (15.7 x 19.7 in)
Edition of 60 + X + 6 AP
Printer: Bernd Smodics
Price: € 1250
about the artwork:
In Explaining Christians to Dinosaurs, the Chapman brothers have created an etching depicting two dinosaurs involved in a brutal and deadly attack. Dinosaurs are commonly depicted in the artists' works, likely due to their association with a predatory and "uncivilised" world. A fundamental feature of the Chapmans' body of works is a fascination with issues of morality; the brothers have themselves declared that the goal of their works is to reduce the viewer to absolute moral panic. Thus, in the naming of this work, the brothers mock religion and purposely court outrage. The title was also used for the Chapmans' first major solo show in Austria, at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in 2005.
Biography of Jake & Dinos Chapman
The artist duo Jake and Dinos Chapman (born 1966 in Cheltenham, UK; 1962 in London, UK) are polarizing figures in the art world, the explicit nature of their installations often causing uproar. Famous for their dismembered mannequins and grotesque, pornographic imagery, they find their inspiration in works by Goya or Hieronymus Bosch, recreating large-scale scenes from their paintings with life-like human mannequins.
Biography of Jake & Dinos Chapman
The brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman aim to shock and are not afraid to confront the public with topics many choose to leave unspoken. Nominated in 2003 for the Turner Prize, important works include Hell, 2000 an installation with 5000 miniature N**i soldiers performing atrocities similar to the imagery of Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights and If Hi**er Had Been a Hippy How Happy Would We Be, 2008 exhibited at the White Cube. For this work the Chapman brothers purchased 13 paintings attributed to Hi**er to which they added rainbows, stars and hearts– childlike imagery in stark contrast to the cruelty associated with these dark times in our human history.
Jake and Dinos Chapman’s ability to create heavily charged works is not limited to large-scale installations. Notable multiples by the brothers include etchings reminiscent of works by William Blake and small-scale reproductions of their installations in silver. With simple titles such as The Same But Silver, 2007 they humorously address the fact that their works are automatically more appreciated and valued when recreated in silver, despite the same explicit and shocking imagery.
