Monster Mash

As a kid, where you afraid of monsters hiding under your bed? Jerôme Meynen, François Dieltiens and Antoine Detaille probably weren’t. Proof: their alter ego’s Hell’O Monsters. Since their first meeting in the late 1990’s, this Brussels collective has evolved from a trio of committed graffiti artists to passionate illustrators who focus on sculpture, installations and wall drawings.

Their artworks are like hand enlighted manuscripts that have been sieved through the filter of street art, resulting in a delicate and fresh visual style. What you’re looking at are intricate drawings that border between medieval fairy tales and surrealism.
Hell’O Monsters have created their own fantastic world that is populated by hybrid characters hovering between human and animal. They sprout from the well-known exquisite corpse-method that was made famous by Magritte, Dali and others: a text or drawing that is continuously written or drawn by various people, resulting in a senseless (but original) ending. The quirky figures invented by the Hell’O Monsters are literal cadavres exquises; strange beings that look like they have been assembled from various (body) parts.

Doctor Frankenstein himself surely couldn’t have done a better job. All the mesmerizing spookiness that sprouts from their pens is mixed with colourful humour, and the occasional flash of an acid smiley that is popping through. These 3 modern monks (or should we say: monksters?) could be called lovechildren of Hieronymus Bosch and Tim Burton. No wonder why that when you’re watching these strange figures performing their danse macabre, you could almost hear Camille Saint-Saëns’ music rolling out of the pictur