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Group White

Group Pink

Group Silver

Star Wars Familly

Kaws Familly

Manga Tableau

Pink Tableau

Barbie Tableau

Heros Tableau

Godzillas Tableau

Gold Tableau

Enouth

Text by Michael Buhrs, director Museum Villa Stuck, Munich

As the point of departure for their photo series TOYGIANTS , the artists Daniel and Geo Fuchs use the, to a certain extent, highly political world of toy figures, which are sold and traded internationally. The artists created portraits of toys in large-sized prints: American comic heroes of the 1960s; muscle-bound fantasy figures; Japanese Manga superstars; actors and directors such as Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone and Quentin Tarantino; even world-leaders such as George W. Bush and his opponent Saddam Hussein; or artists such as Andy Warhol who are presented as “toys”.

The artists Daniel and Geo Fuchs began their work on TOYGIANTS with Batman , Superman and Hulk. The belief in progress is written on the faces of these figures, as is the idealism with which comic heroes are charged. How different the worn-out and spent faces of Willis or Stallone, a soldier of the Cold War era for whom it seems no task remains. And the borders between reality and fiction disappear completely when the portraits of figures of Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden are shown.

The toy figures photographed by Daniel and Geo Fuchs all come from the Collection Varol, which in the meantime includes over 10,000 objects. In the rooms of Munich’s artist/prince Franz von Stuck, who like no other artist of his day understood the concept of self-promotion, the works in TOYGIANTS unfold their, to a certain extent, terrifying, iconic effect.

At the centre of the exhibition are questions regarding the power of self-promotion through the media by political figures or actors in a networked world of entertainment and “war games”. The iconographic strategies of a president climbing out of a fighter plane equipped with military gear are scrutinised by Daniel and Geo Fuchs in their photograph of an originally packaged George W. Bush. They leave the interpretation of the empty, pale-white faces to the visitor: what is real and what is staged ?.

TOYGIANTS puts us and our viewing habits to the test.