Aurèle (b. 1963) has achieved international acclaim over the past three decades for his LostDog series. These spectacular installations of giant sculpted bull terriers can be found in the heart of metropolises around the globe from Paris to New York, London and Shanghai.  Earning the artist the nickname “Andy Warhol’s nephew,” this series of works marries the mass culture and appeal of pop art, with the incisive political commentary of conceptual artists like Marcel Duchamp.

 

Inspired by a missing dog poster that Aurèle stumbled across one day in New York, these sculptures represent displaced mankind. According to the artist, “there was everything from our lives in this poster: money, material or spiritual quest, emotion, willpower, choice, desire and above all loss. This lost dog was like mankind, lost in the confusion of the modern world.”  The diverse iterations of Aurèle’s “lost dogs” across the world each offer an omen of human destiny through the artist’s eyes. Commenting on global issues affecting mankind from wars to deforestation, pollution, and social and political extremism, each presents a different kind of threat yet emphasises our common destiny. Through this series, Aurèle leads us to the realisation that we all are “lost dogs” and need to find our own individual paths back to sanity, thereby collectively avoiding a fatal outcome.