Taxidermy: you either love it or hate it. A fact that’s not up for debate is the amount of skills needed to become a taxidermist. Animals are complex creatures and you don’t want your creation to end up on crappytaxidermy.com! For Dutch artist duo Les Deux Garçons taxidermy is a big part of their creative oeuvre, yet in a less traditional way than you might expect.
Les Deux Garçons is the collective name of Michel Vanderheijden van Tinteren and Roel Moonen, who met each other when they studied plastic design at the Academy of Visual Arts in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The duo started working together in 2000 and have since then created a name for themselves with absurd, theatrical sculptures. They’re well-known for their controversial taxidermy pieces: instead of giving the dead animals back their natural appearance they transform them into fantastic creatures. Siamese twin-lambs, parakeets that are half-animal, half-porcelain figurine or exotic birds trapped into intricate compositions of delicate cups and saucers: nothing is too weird for Les Deux Garçons. All pieces are extremely well-made and look spiffy and polished. You might say these works wouldn’t look off in your grandma’s glass cabinet, if your grandmother is into slightly weird things of course.
The often humorous and provoking pieces of Les Deux Garçons have been challenging people from all over the world to form an opinion. Just as with taxidermy there are many people who love their work, but also people who don’t. No matter what, seeing one or more of the fascinating works in person will be a memory you won’t easily forget.
You can find more of the duo’s work, including non-taxidermy sculptures, on their website.
