"Leopold Rabus"
2009-11-14 until 2010-02-07
GEM, Museum of Contemporary Art
Den Haag, , NL Netherlands

Léopold Rabus is displayed from 14 November 2009 to 7 February 2010 at GEM, Museum of Contemporary Art, The Hague. The human figures depicted by the Swiss artist Léopold Rabus (1977) are ill-fated, gruesome, awkward or crazy, but always humorous. Against the backdrop of an realistically rendered woodland scene and toadstools, a deserted shed or wooden house in the forest, he paints people from his immediate surroundings: Neuchâtel. His work, which is permeated with (black) humour, is akin to that of artists such as the German Jonathan Meese and the American Paul McCarthy. With the first solo museum exhibition of Rabus' work, GEM is continuing its tradition of prominent exhibitions of contemporary art. The adjacent Gemeentemuseum already owns two monumental paintings by Rabus. They are part of the contemporary art collection that also includes paintings by Daniel Richter, Mattias Weischer, Michael Raedecker and Tjebbe Beekman.

Rabus takes local traditions and customs as his point of reference, and depicts them as something to laugh at. His rendering of a hunting scene, for example, is not a heroic scene but a tragicomic spectacle of two ugly hunters with horns and guns, accompanied by a pack of dogs that are busy tearing apart a fox.

Today, it seems that everyone wants to broaden their horizons and see everything of the world, but not Rabus. What fascinates him is the local context, the traditions of his home. But those traditions are disappearing. In Neuchâtel, among other places, it used to be the custom to collect hair from the head of a deceased loved one and make it into a flower composition. Now, by contrast, that tradition is regarded as very strange "morbid" even. For Rabus, traditions like this are intimate and moving. The tradition inspired him to produce a woodland house that at first glance looks perfectly normal, but is actually covered entirely with human hair!

Whereas the setting, landscape or background of his bizarre works are often rendered in a realistic manner, Rabus' human figures are caricatures whose heads are out of proportion to their small bodies. The figures have milk-white skin and dark eyes that are averted from the viewer. They give the impression of bungling antiheroes and are depicted in locations such as abandoned basements, woods, but also in teenagers' rooms or on farms, where the artist creates an uneasy atmosphere. There is a sense of futility about them; they are engaged in everyday activities that are not worth bothering about.

Rabus chooses to base his work on the place in which he lives. Despite that local orientation, he is able to give a broader, universal meaning to his work. He presents an incisive view of the day-to-day peculiarities of human existence in general. After The Hague, the exhibition will move to the Museum zu Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen and then to Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven. The exhibition will be accompanied by a richly illustrated monograph published in cooperation with Hatje Cantz.

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