Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys at KIN & Gladstone Gallery

(KIN, Gladstone)

Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys is a long term investigation into the lowest level of stupidity we can still identify with. The lowest level of lifeform, brainmatter. The groaning idiocy of the fringes, the plains of simpletons, us, you slurring, drooling everyone, the world, these things contained by the world, by the artworld filled with the cranially polished, symbolically medalled, forced to consider farts. Perhaps stupidity is the The Thing, the attempt to assimilate an intelligence, to become human, invade us. Stupidity is a poison ready to escape its terraria, spread.

Venice 2019, Belgium Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys Mondo Cane

(link)

Against Venetian statuary, against marble gods with triforks, JdGHT's is wantonly provincial, the unsophisticate, the stupid it is. Turns out, despite centuries of looking up at them, we don't actually resemble Greek Gods. Instead these sullen mannequins far more accurate to the people encircling it. Tourists or art-polloi are made electric by this awful mirror. We are the botched paintings of Christ. It is a cruel realization that more than the marble, we unfortunately echo these, you Chuck-E-Cheese animatronic. Turns out people are ugly. A Golden Lion to mockery as corrective.
Welcome to Belgium.


Read all posts about Jos De Gruyter and Harald Thys
Read: Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys at Kunsthal Aarhus, Jos De Gruyter and Harald Thys at Gavin Brown, Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys at Wattis, Jos De Gruyter and Harald Thys at MoMA PS1

Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys at Kunsthal Aarhus

“They seem big in the empty room. And they remind you of grandiose busts of important people. But when you approach the individual head, it’s as if it’s shrinking, and instead mimics the violent gesture of a decapitated, mummified trophy."

That's a pretty good description. It's JdG&HT's deflationary effect. An initially expected form withdraws, and the more you look the stupider and stupider they get. They appear to hit rock bottom stupidity, but then they fall a little more. They're funny, but they don't feel good to laugh at, no matter how stupid they are, they still reflect us. The doofus in film is guaranteed redemption by the contrivances of plot and will win out in the end. These characters get none. Our laughter will not be redeemed.


Read all posts about Jos De Gruyter and Harald Thys

Jos De Gruyter and Harald Thys at Gavin Brown

(link)

Painful, de Gruyter and Thys' developmentally delayed style, filled with speech impediments, slow progress, and language drifting into nonsense, is, like von Trier's early film, an idiocy against social decorum, our socially vulnerable conversations, socially conscious movies, replayed by the slow and impaired, mocking our banal conversations we've had, transmute conversation into madness. Comedy edges total breakdown of sense, turning to a horror that seems to endlessly please dG&T. This banal horror of too-much, of waste, of, in spite of such, cruelly, maniacally plain smiles.


See too: Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys at Wattis, Jos De Gruyter and Harald Thys at MoMA PS1

Jos De Gruyter and Harald Thys at MoMA PS1

(link)

It's the overkill of documentation that wins the joke. While some spend 8hrs a day in an office, and 2 in a commute, some spend them making lewd drawings with friends, and they really really want you to see that.

See too: Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys at Wattis