Robert Longo & Yan Pei-Ming Facing the Wild: The Jungle Book Revisited

Facing the Wild: The Jungle Book Revisited In his video work The Pure Necessity, artist David Claerbout asks what would happen if the animals in the classic Walt Disney film The Jungle Book were to behave true to their species. The video, in which the original film's scenes and characters undergo just such a transformation, is the point of departure for an exhibition exploring the coexistence and conflicts between humankind, its environment, and the animals that inhabit it. The diverse contemporary works of the participating artists occupy a spectrum between the imaginary and the realistic, the luminous and the dark, utopia and apocalypse. The changing roles of prey and predator in these works lead us to ask – who, in fact, is the beast?