Through an acid and ironic view of our society, Skwak constructs a parallel world fed by the vices and excesses of our time. As the land of “always more’, this Maniac World is populated by characters with exaggerated flaws on an unstoppable quest of beauty, sex and money. Pure products of our over consumptive society, they remain no less charming and funny. This is Skwaks’ uncritical and amoral vision of the world, in the way Jerome Bosch would offer us his, some centuries ago.

During his first exhibition in ADDICTGalerie, Skwak introduced us to the genesis of the Maniacs history. This time around he revisits the universe of our childhood, mixing nostalgia with humour. Covering a few great fairy tales becomes his excuse for getting us to know “The Little Match Girl” or even “Hansel and Gretel” better, transposed inside the Maniac World. The tales resulting weave a sort of maze where characters and situations interlace, saturating the canvas to suffocation. As we get lost inside this universe both cruel and enchanting meanders, Skwak reveals us the hidden face of our childhoods’ fairytales.

It is us who are the main actors of this amoral universe, since Skwak only draws his inspiration from reality. He pursues his quest for the absurd on the Internet or in the newspapers seeking for trivial facts, which at times become so surreal they could be the product of the imagination of one of his degenerate characters. Contemporary society completely invades thus the narrative space. The artists’ work is also inspired by his TV culture, haunted by characters such as Homer Simpson. Blending all of these images, he portrays the futility of our daily concerns. Thus, in “Make a Wish” the fairy that grants all wishes only keeps getting asked for more power, in a derisory and inhuman way. Sometimes Skwak devotes himself to one of his maniacs in order to sketch the iconoclastic portrait of a personality such as Roman Polanski wearing Lolita’s glasses, or Poutine bearing Mickey’s ears. A wheedling grin gives those faces all their vivacity, in a composition that reminds us of Aboriginal paintings, through a glow and an intensity that we could also find in the universe of an artist like Combas.

With this exhibition, ADDICTGalerie brings back to light an illustrative art that yields back its place to ironic narration. By a colourful and playful manner, “Histoires grotesques et sérieuses” raises our awareness of the worlds’ breathtaking absurdity.