Monster Chetwynd: A CAT IS NOT A DOG

Monster Chetwynd: A CAT IS NOT A DOG
March 3–May 29, 2023

The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is presenting a location-specific installation by Monster Chetwynd (b. 1973) in its public Rotunda. The artist achieved fame with her exuberant and humorous performances using handmade costumes, props, and settings. Her works are often absurd and full of joie de vivre; they refer to popular culture or iconic works from art history.

In the Rotunda of the Schirn, the artist is reacting directly and playfully to the conditions of the freely accessible location. She is having visitors enter the roofed-in space through the open mouths of three monstrous Heads. Entering the monumental sculptures Il Tetto (2017), Hell Mouth 3 (2019) and Cat Head and Toxic Garden (2022) permits an experience of space that differs from everyday life.

Dr. Sebastian Baden, director of the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, notes: “Monster Chetwynd is without doubt one of the most important performance and installation artists of our time. Her art invites interaction and makes use of humor as a means of social change. With her installation, Chetwynd directly involves the public by making them cross into the Schirn through the open mouths of her Heads. Her art is direct and can also be understood in this respect both as an invitation and as a democratic statement.”

Chetwynd’s performance and installation art is based on a multitude of influences from film and television, literature, antiquity, art history and philosophy, and even musicals. The artist combines elements of pop and high culture in a casual manner. Thus, the title of the Schirn exhibition “A CAT IS NOT A DOG” is a play on the popular musical Cats, but also on the eponymous film and on its critique, such as the humorous documentary Why Is Cats. With the three Heads Chetwynd is referring at the same time to a motif of the Christian pictorial tradition: the “Hellmouth” or Gateway to Hell. As a passageway or entrance, this motif was also appropriated in Sacro Bosco near Bomarzo, an Italian sculpture garden from the sixteenth century, or in the artist Niki de Saint Phalle’s Tarot Garden in Tuscany, as well as in today’s amusement parks.

Sustainability and participation are essential elements for Chetwynd’s creative activity; in the Schirn, the artist makes existing sculptures tangible in a new, location-specific form. The choice of materials and the processual nature of her working method can also be understood as a critical commentary on consumer society. For Chetwynd, the changes which leave their mark on the materials during the process of dismantling and rebuilding also form an essential component of the work. This approach contradicts traditional ideas that art objects are, by definition, unique creations. Also Chetwynd’s repeated changes in name—from Spartacus Chetwynd to Marvin Gaye and finally to Monster Chetwynd—reflect a strategy of undermining the usual rules of art.

Katharina Dohm, curator of the exhibition, says of the artist: “Monster Chetwynd breaks with the traditions and conventions of the art world in a highly original and humorous way. With the repeated changes to her artist name, she questions gender and the relevance of authorship and signature. Her art unites elements of popular culture with iconic moments of cultural history in an effortless and approachable way, focusing on questions of sustainability through the reuse of existing materials. In a relaxed manner, Chetwynd undermines concepts of value and consistency and lets the public perceive familiar objects in a subversive and alternative light.”

The exhibition Monster Chetwynd: A CAT IS NOT A DOG is supported by the SCHIRN ZEITGENOSSEN, with additional support from the British Council.

Director: Dr. Sebastian Baden
Curator: Katharina Dohm, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt