WAR-BEAU: THE CONCEPT
Angelbert Metoyer’s War-Beau project is one of the most ambitious artistic undertakings of modern times – a conceptual motherload comprising thirteen exhibitions that seek to ask fundamental questions about what it means to be alive. Metoyer believes all of us to be reflections of each other and that an act of war is a form of self-harm. For Metoyer, any violent act is an attack upon the whole of humanity and has a negative impact upon our collective consciousness. When we consider the state we find ourselves in at the beginning of the 21st century, it could certainly be argued that we are a species with a taste for self-harm; that we are a species seeking progress via the application of violence and cruelty; that we are a species concerned only with the survival of the fittest; that we are a species obssessed with unattainable images of beauty; that we are a species hungry for power, money and subjugation; that we are a species whose very existence serves only to make a mockery of the philosophical concept of what it is to be ‘humane’.
War-Beau is an ongoing intellectual and spiritual investigation into all of the above and much more besides: a series of works comprising a wide variety of media that question the deep-rooted motivational impulses that lead us into seemingly eternal cycles of war and destruction. War-Beau addresses the most pertinent question of human existence: “What are the things that never change, and what are the things that change all the time?” Metoyer considers the relationship between war and beauty to provide a prism through which it is possible to discover the answer to this question. Both war and beauty are concepts that are constantly in flux: no person’s definition is the same, yet humankind’s collective struggle is to define them, and our recorded histories and our art exist to chart our progress. The horrific realities of war often inspires beautiful imagery, and Metoyer’s ongoing War-Beau project is an eloquent contribution to the never-ending conversation between current and past generations as to why and how. The thirteen exhibitions comprising War-Beau will become the focus of all Metoyer’s work over the coming decade, and each of them shall explore the concepts outlined above via the application of specific thematic schemata, taking a wide variety of media in their sway.
look at mirror mirror
