Inauguración @ YAM Gallery: Antonio Chaurand

Inauguración @ YAM Gallery: Antonio Chaurand

Viernes 22 de marzo 2019
7pm

YAM Gallery
Instituto Allende,
Ancha de San Antonio 20

+52 415 150 6052
info@yamgallery.com

“Struwwelpeter: Causa y Consecuncia”, a new art exhibit by Antonio Chaurand at the YAM Gallery that opens on Friday, March 22, takes as its subject the surreal and sometimes grisly world of cautionary tales for children.

Born in Celaya in 1989 and a graduate from Instituto Allende School of Art, Chaurand was a 2018 finalist for the Maco Art Fair acquisition prize. He is currently the recipient of a scholarship from the Mexican Council for the arts.

His exhibit’s title comes from “Der Struwwelpeter” (Peter the Disheveled), a book of children’s tales written by Dr. Heinrich Hoffman in 1845, published in English as “Slovenly Peter”. Each tale, written in short rhymes, depicts a situation in which young children are punished for misbehaving.

The book’s aim was to create unforgettable examples in the minds of young readers, with punishments so cruel they are absolutely terrifying to the modern reader: a little girl told not to play with her parent’s lighter is burned to ashes; a thumb-sucking boy is warned that his fingers will be cutoff if he continues, and they are; another boy who doesn’t eat his soup actually dies of starvation. The book was a huge success and was translated to many foreign languages. American author Mark Twain provided the English translation. Nowadays it remains a success in bookstores.

Chaurand has read these stories to his daughter and discovered together with her their moral lessons and somber descriptions. The dissonance between our idyllic vision of childhood stories and the violence inflicted on little ones in these tales can inspire both horror and a sense of farce. It is exactly this intermediate space between light and shadows, the chiaroscuro, which Antonio has depicted in this series of work.

Chaurand has chosen a very narrative way to illustrate the ten stories of Struwwelpeter: each tale is printed on paper and hung along with one painting and one lithograph. The universe he builds is so vivid that you will have the sensation of having fallen inside a page of the book. It is a bit frightening!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA