Jake and Dinos Chapman's 'Fucking Hell' at Hastings Museum

Jake and Dinos Chapman's monumental installation 'Fucking Hell' (2008), part of the Pinault collection, was on view at the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery until March 14, 2010. The work consists of nine pedestals arranged in a swastika shape, covered with thousands of meticulously painted Nazi figurines engaged in endless mutual slaughter, sexual violence, and apocalyptic scenes. The piece draws on the grotesque tradition, referencing Goya, William Blake, and Georges Bataille, and is often compared to Martin Dammann's 'Soldier Studies' photographs of off-duty Nazi soldiers, shown at the 2009 Venice Biennale. The Chapman brothers, former assistants to Gilbert & George and part of the Young British Artists generation, have long explored themes of death, violence, and scatology. 'Fucking Hell' is the second iteration of a project whose first version, 'Hell' (1999-2000), was destroyed in a warehouse fire. The artists describe their work as materialist, citing Claude Lanzmann's 'Shoah' as an influence for its focus on the technical apparatus of recording rather than metaphysics. The installation forces viewers into the position of a child pressing against a glass case, unable to see everything, evoking Bataille's notion of art as a 'ravishment without rest.'