Dissect your cuddly toys

“Every one of us creates his/her own fetishes, but I wanted to make something that appeals to our collective memory.” And how better to do it than with iconic figures like the Smurfs, Nemo, the Pink Panther, or Mickey Mouse. The French artist of Spanish extraction Jean-Philippe Illanes knows this well. With visible pleasure and a great deal of patience, he has taken scissors to the heroes of his youth and recycled them into flamboyant artworks: a cuddly alphabet, a kitschy totem, a dissected Ernie from Sesame Street, or a lacerated Spider-Man. Illanes confronts us with the general idolatry of which toys are both the object and propagator, and questions the utopian expectations adults often instil in children. “A cuddly toy is one of the ways to make us believe everything is black or white, to keep things deceptively simple. I hate the completely unbridled merchandising of the toy and entertainment industry,” the artist tells us. Apart from the possible hidden messages and the interesting social critique, Illanes’s work is also striking thanks to its playful, slightly morbid, and humorous nature. A discovery.

Jean-Philippe Illanes: Reliquia > 17/11, do/je/Th > za/sa/Sa 12.30 > 19.00, Galerie Lot10, rue Lanfraystraat 15, Elsene/Ixelles, 02-647.74.59, info@lot10.eu, www.lot10.eu