Artists: Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys
Exhibition title: I Piccoli Pupazzi Sporchi di Pruppà
Venue: Sant’Andrea De Scaphis, Rome, Italy
Date: November 21 – December 19, 2015
Photography: Roberto Apa, images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise
In 2012, 30 life-size puppets were made from jute and straw.
This number grew to 54 in the course of 2013. This series of puppets was called Die Schmutzigen Puppen von Pommern, after a region extending across northern Germany and Poland.
In the spring of 2015 it was decided that a large number of small puppets were to be manufactured from the same material, providing that each should not exceed 35 cm and have a totally different character from one another. A team of six people worked on this series for about 3,000 hours in a small workshop at the canal in Brussels.
The undertaking was completed on November 13, 2015. The result was 164 puppets.
The work was titled I Piccoli Puppazzi Sporchi di Pruppà, after a small hamlet in the southeast of Italy, not far from the town of Stilo.
Jos de Gruyter (b. 1965) and Harald Thys (b. 1966), who have collaborated together since the late 1980s, have held solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1 (2015), The Power Station, Dallas (2015), CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2015), Kunsthalle Wien (2014), M HKA, Antwerp (2013), Mu.ZEE, Ostend (2012), Kunsthalle Basel (2010) and Culturgest, Lisbon (2009). They live and work in Brussels.
Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, I Piccoli Pupazzi Sporchi di Pruppà, 2015
Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, I Piccoli Pupazzi Sporchi di Pruppà, 2015
Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, I Piccoli Pupazzi Sporchi di Pruppà, 2015
Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, I Piccoli Pupazzi Sporchi di Pruppà, 2015
Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, I Piccoli Pupazzi Sporchi di Pruppà, 2015
Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, I Piccoli Pupazzi Sporchi di Pruppà, 2015
Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, I Piccoli Pupazzi Sporchi di Pruppà, 2015
Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, I Piccoli Pupazzi Sporchi di Pruppà, 2015
Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, I Piccoli Pupazzi Sporchi di Pruppà, 2015
Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, I Piccoli Pupazzi Sporchi di Pruppà, 2015
