— Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys
Jos de Gruyter (b. 1965) and Harald Thys (b. 1966) have spent nearly three decades creating a collaborative body of work rooted in a folksy, tragicomic sensibility. Their highly idiosyncratic output spans films, videos, photographs, and sculptures, exploring the existential and often conjuring dramatic, surreal situations that reflect basic human emotions and paradoxical behavior.
Their aesthetic vocabulary is shaped by the natural awkwardness of untrained actors and the glazed expressions of asylum patients. This raw quality is honed into experimental drama, creating a strange and sometimes macabre theatre of the absurd.
The artists aim to confront marginal, incapacitated, lost, and alienated subjects without resorting to sociological definitions. Through their innovative use of ghoulish humor, Thys and de Gruyter expand the possibilities for reflection on human social behavior, pushing the boundaries of how we perceive and understand the "other."