L’or mord l’os

cadet capela is pleased to present the exhibition “L’or mord l’os” bringing together the works of French artist Ken Sortais and American artist Christian Rex van Minnen, united by their common exploration of beauty and the grotesque.

Ken Sortais and Christian Rex van Minnen explore the infinite possibilities of their mediums by metamorphosing their subjects. Respectively influenced by mythological statuary and the techniques of the Dutch Golden Age, their works are distinguished by the way they provoke both attraction and repulsion in viewers.

I like his way of thinking. Ken’s work makes me feel like I’m seeing a form in its multidimensional state, a kind of physical boundary between two states. The paradox of the scale of his sculpture, its material, and its weight inspired my ‘Bursa’ series in the exhibition, which evokes a fluid body acting as a buf er between two forces.
– Christian Van Minnen

Both he and I start from this classical basis, and with our respective actions and choices, we mangle our subjects until they sometimes become completely unrecognizable, giving them a new identity. The antagonists always clash within the work, and the public is often as attracted as repelled by the forms we use.
– KenSortais

Van Minnen, inspired by Venetian techniques developed by Titian and Rembrandt, creates paintings with a disturbingly plastic precision, blending beauty and grotesque in a strikingly photographic rendering. Inspired by surrealism and the spiritual teachings of Carl Jung, the artist explores the internal transformations of the body and mind through an alchemical visual language. His paintings show how experiences of change can be physically felt, transforming the body into a host of these metamorphoses.

For this exhibition, Ken Sortais created latex sculptures from engines or mechanical debris found in junkyards, assembling them with various imprints made on classical statues. These mechanical elements gradually invade the human body until they completely merge with it. For the artist, the grafting process recalls the erotic and morbid atmosphere of J.G. Ballard’s book “Crash,” which explores the link between sexual perversion and car accidents. His characters seem to be the result of such accidents, where flesh and steel unite. Ken Sortais shapes hybrid creatures with an anthropomorphic appearance, half-human, half-machine, reflecting internal harmony and discord. The created sculptures become physical witnesses to this duality.

This dialogue between these two exceptional artists offers a dive into their respective creative universes, revealing works that, while paying homage to classical techniques and forms, innovatively explore the themes of embodiment, metamorphosis, and human duality.