Brothers in Arts

They are the Chapman brothers, Jake, 30, and Dinos, 35—the latest British rude boys to unleash their brand of aesthetic terrorism on the art world. Last year they got London going with "Chapmanworld," an ambitious installation of their trademark Freudmeets-Frankenstein tableaux: scenes from a demented Disneyland of the unconscious, populated by mangled mannequins adorned with hyperrealistic adult genitalia erupting from the most unlikely places.

From sex to death. The next phase of the brothers' evolution will be "Six Feet Under," opening at the Gagosian Gallery in New York this September. "The show is going to be a mass grave," says Jake. "There'll be grass and trees and lots of mutated figures looking down into a pit." Asked what response he wants from the viewer, he replies, "Vomit. No, laughter. And then vomit. Money. No—I don't know." Despite their provocateur pose, something serious is happening here; the work is deeply disquieting. The Chapmans are mucking around in the mind's swampy sewer, pulling out primal imaginings and unarticulated nightmares. The psychobiology of their terrifying figures makes for meaty mutations that go bump and grind in the night.

A. M. HOMES