Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Exhibition: Palaeontology meets Hanna-Barbera

from Nature 448, 650  (9 August 2007)

Korean artist Hyungkoo Lee's quirky take on palaeontology is a showstopper among the acres of international contemporary art on offer at the 52nd Venice Biennale.

Lee, the first artist to have a solo show in his country's pavilion, immediately grabs the attention of visitors with a dramatically spotlit moment from the world's geological past, staged in the centre of a darkened room. The skeleton of a predator, pouncing on its transfixed, smaller prey, initially evokes the natural history tableaux encountered in museums.

Closer examination reveals that the exaggerated quality of Lee's tableau owes more to cartoon animators William Hanna and Richard Barbera than to palaeontologists. Reading the exhibit titles, Mus Animatus and Felis Catus [sic] Animatus, confirms that we're looking at Tom and Jerry, caught in their perpetual cycle of tragedy narrowly averted, with Jerry outwitting Tom to escape in the nick of time.

This work is part of Lee's Animatus series, in which he "explores hypothetical anatomical possibilities of beings without existential evidence".



See what you're getting into…before you go there

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