Steve Gianakos: How to Murder Your Pet

Created in 1978, the twenty-four drawings in “How to Murder Your Pet” are exemplary of Gianakos‘ art. The theme of the exhibition is the sometimes exaggerated affection we have for our pets.

In this series, Gianakos depicts pet killing techniques, torture, which are variations of the original cruelty described by Freud to define the human-animal relationship.
While some of them have an obvious sexual connotation, many depict the brutal – and presumably painful – encounter between an orifice and a foreign body. Following a logic as implacable as the rigour of his line – a mechanical, objective, non-personal line that maintains the same width throughout its length – the abuses that the artist imagines are not so much the fruit of a fertile imagination as of a Magritte-like dialectic. Beyond parody, this series is enriched by a deeply metaphorical, obscure, even twilight dimension on the artistic avant-garde.