I first met The Meatgrinders during the Berlin summer when I was living in ReTramp gallery on Reuterstrasse. Sheet fortresses were built, skin was permanently stained and copious underwear-only clad booze trips to the Späti were made. Meanwhile, the walls at ReTramp took a wrong turn down the rabbit hole and were transformed into some kind of shrine to deformity, decay and bad taste. Come the exhibition, mutilated sex toys lay here and there while old porn films played casually in the corner and drunk girls ran around painting everyone as demonic cats.

Now that winter has well and truly flipped an icy finger and sent large contingent of the inbred Meatgrinders family for warmer shores, what does Berlin have in store for the literal blood brothers of Yowza and Dead Wait? I sacrificed my liver, lungs and a great deal of sanity to find out.

Artparasites: What’s behind the name Meatgrinders?

Dead Wait: A movie, Judge Dredd.

Yowza: Well, comic…but it was made into a movie. Judge Dredd, the comic book character, he’s like a police officer in the super future.

Dead Wait: In like 20118. 

Yowza: In a hyper populated police state … and he’s describing the city as (using action hero voice), “This city’s like one giant meat grinder, people go in one end and meat comes out the other."

Would you describe your collective work as violent?

Dead Wait: I think our work is like comic book hyperrealism. It’s so ridiculous that it’s like: that shit would never happen. I think it draws a line between realism and us running away with our imaginations. I mean, I really love 80’s horror movies coz it’s just so over the top. When people get killed there’s just so much blood and so much guts that it’s just kind of funny.

Yowza: Like ten liters of tomato ketchup. I don’t think there is a violent theme in our works, none of our pictures have anyone hurting anyone else. It’s more about decay and gore – I think there is a fine line between that and violence. Half characters, half decomposing shit.

What do The Meatgrinders do in winter?

Dead Wait: We just fucking make books. We spend every second drawing and masturbating. Masturbating over each other’s drawings.

Yowza: Our book is made from one hundred percent recycled semen. If you sat on one of our books you’d become pregnant. And when you give birth you don’t survive because they burst out of your chest like in Alien.

Dead Wait: Nah man, not the chest.

Yowza: Alright, they burst out of your nipples, one head at a time: first your child, then mine.

Dead Wait: And then they start making out because that’s our creative process. Whenever we get stuck for ideas, we make out.

Yowza: It’s almost like our saliva is the creative juice: the conductor and our tongues are our paintbrushes.

Dead Wait: I actually love winter, to be honest. I mean, fuck, last winter we were living in a van.

Yowza: Yeah, we shared a studio and were working together. The van was so shit to stay in so we’d wake up and walk across the street to the studio and work all day – not because we wanted to but because it was warm and better than being in the van.

Dead Wait: But I’ve really been enjoying this winter…

Yowza: Yeah, coz you’re not in the van

 I have one last question before I surface for air.

You have been kidnapped by reptilians, shot into outer space with an animal to create a subspecies of half human/half animal. Which animal do you pro-create with, why and could you draw your spawn for me?

Dead Wait: The best parts of me. My spine, jaw, forearms and ooze got joined with a crow to make a pumpkin, nut-shooting alien that wins.

Yowza: Botanists observe flora and fauna in making their job easier. Because my hybrid species is flora and fauna combined. I have genetically engineered my species with the ability to terra-form barren planets while maintaining self-sufficiency with food, water and solar power – a.k.a. the best inter-planet species ever. It also has carrot launching missiles in case of crow attacks.

These guys are bonkers. Complete lady-boner material for sure, but completely bonkers. Yet as nuts as they are, they’re completely dedicated to progressing in their work and improving as artists. They're partners in crime and totally in love.

Love these guys? Find some other fucked up and slightly fucked up options here:

The Man Behind The Gory Art

Are Classic Paintings Doomed To Be Internet Jokes?

The Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Article by Sarah Disgrace

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