15th Biennale de Lyon
MAC Lyon, Lyon
Daniel Dewar & Grégory Gicquel
Mammalian Fantasies (Fantasmes mammifères)
18 September 2019 – 05 January 2020

Installation View

Oak relief with body fragments and snails, 2019
Oak wood
75 × 88 × 17 cm

Oak relief with body fragments, 2019
Oak wood
120 × 88 × 17 cm

Oak relief with body fragments and mirror carp, 2019
Oak wood
120 × 132 × 17 cm

Oak relief with body fragments, 2019
Oak wood
140 × 176 × 17 cm

Oak relief with body fragments, 2019
Oak wood
140 × 88 × 17 cm

Oak Relief with Body Fragments, 2018
Oak wood
120 × 132 × 17 cm

Installation View

Installation View

Oak dresser with pigs, 2019
oak wood
136 × 165.5 × 165.5 cm

Oak cabinet with butternut squash, buttercup squash and noses, 2019
Oak wood
163.5 × 200 × 65 cm

Oak cabinet with butternut squash, buttercup squash and noses, 2019
Oak wood
163.5 × 200 × 65 cm

Oak dresser with harnessed oxen, 2019
Oak wood
141 × 135 × 100 cm

Installation View

Installation View

Installation View

Installation View

Installation View

Oak Relief with Man, Pig, and Shell, 2018
Oak wood
87 × 266 × 29 cm

Installation View

Installation View

Oak Chest of Drawers with Giant Flanders Rabbit and Arms, 2018
Oak wood
90 × 104 × 57 cm

Oak cabinet with organs, 2017
Oak wood
250 × 261 × 86 cm
Press release
The Mammalian Fantasies series continues the artists’ long-term examination of the place of man, who is essentially just another mammal in an anti-speciesist bestiary. In their imaginary museum, all of the sculpted-wood items have been transformed by their hallucinatory visions. Precise and unhinged in equal measure, this corpus of works in solid oak depicts the chance marriage of a sow and a man, the excavation of harnessed oxen, the appearance of giant rabbits from Flanders and an exponential multiplication of human limbs. On level two of macLYON, the artists imagine pastorally inspired furniture and nourishing, sexual grapplings between reclining human figures and other smooth-skinned animals. On the third floor of the museum, a large wardrobe, whose surface is covered by a set of intestines, forms the centerpoint in a constellation of bas-reliefs depicting fragments of dismembered bodies. In the latter ensemble, foreground and background merge. Working by hand to recreate the effects of perfect duplication that only digital machines can produce, Dewar & Gicquel transform their primary subjects (abdomens, muscles) into a backdrop from which fresh motifs (arms, toes) spring forth and could, in turn, multiply and blend into the mass.