Mondo cane

de Jos De Gruyter, Harald Thys, Anne Claire Schmitz

The publication MONDO CANE is being released to coincide with Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys eponymous exhibition for the Belgian Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale. MONDO CANE works as a compilation of articles reporting various facts and events about the world that surrounds us. Each article comprises a descriptive text and one or more illustrations. The book is, from the outset, an international publication. The texts appear, at random, in Dutch, English, French, German and Italian. The tone adopted for the articles and drawings is informative, non-spectacular and monotonous. De Gruyter and Thys have a habit of distilling fictions from a reality that can sometimes be too real. They happily claim to be attracted to the state of psychosis in contemporary society, while at the same time dreading it and disseminating it through their creations. Without ever descending into cynicism or morality, the artist duo manages-with skill, and not without humour-in transforming what looks like fear or a state of latency into an uncanny and critical reality that goes beyond the status quo.00Exhibition: Belgian Pavilion, Venice, Italy (11.05.-24.11.2019).