August 2014
La Petite Mort Gallery presents
AITCH & SADDO / COFFINS
August 15 – 28, 2014 / Vernissage Friday August 15 / 7 – 10pm
Tunes by Big Mac Daddy
Statement
When we first started developing a rough idea for our second duo-show at La Petite Mort Gallery, we had recently moved to Lisbon and the winter caught us by surprise, we didn’t expect it to be so rainy, gloomy, and depressing. It deeply affected our mood and even our physical state, we often felt trapped inside our dark, moist house, inside slow moving, joint aching bodies – and every once in a while, maybe more often than usual, a coffin would pop up in both our illustrations and paintings. So we decided to make the best of it and came up with a very simple and striking name – COFFINS.
The subject reflects our state of mind, our mood, our fears and insomnias, but of course, at the same time it is such a beautiful, mysterious and eerie shape, which creeps in our illustrations either as a simple center piece, or as a vessel for dreamy girls, or as a small box carried around by a grotesque creature, or even as a fantastic character’s body, incasing a dead bird.
It can be dark and creepy, sad and desolate, fantastic and dreamy, or even quirkily funny.
ARTISTS:
Aitch is inspired by naturalistic illustrations, Oriental textile patterns, Naive Art. legends and folklore, so she creates colourful water-colour illustrations on paper, or characters cut out of wood, intricate beasts with bodies composed of birds, wolves, snakes, flowers, all evoking fantastical scenes of splendour and malice. It is an ongoing process that draws its essence from mundane experiences filtered through an allegorical point of view.
Saddo brings together primitive, tribal elements, with influences from Renaissance, old Flemish Masters and Bosch, in his complex, dark illustrations on paper, or in his colourful paintings on canvas or on pieces of found wood. In most of of the paintings he explores the presence of animals in different mythologies and legends of the world – from Norse mythology to shamanic rituals from South America – , mixing different influences and meanings into ambiguous, dreamlike scenes populated by hypnotic characters with animal features.
Aitch – www.aitch.ro
Saddo – www.saddo.ro