In 1991 H.R. Giger produced a series of pen-and-ink drawings inspired by the writings of the Marquis de Sade. The connection was a natural one. Sade’s explorations of sexual transgression, cruelty and the abuse of power had long fascinated the surrealists, and his writing offered Giger a literary counterpart to the disturbing conjunction of sex, violence and death that recurs throughout his own work. Among the works most often associated with this tradition are Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom and The 120 Days of Sodom. He had been thinking about Sade’s works for some time, the earliest related work being a 1966 drawing titled 120 Tage von Sodom.

These drawings are tightly constructed, claustrophobic scenes in which human figures are caught up in elaborate tableaux of domination and submission. Bodies are contorted, restrained or subjected to the attentions of others, while the surrounding spaces are filled with dark, interlocking forms and strange apparatus. Giger’s characteristic biomechanical imagery is present, but here it serves a more explicitly narrative purpose.

Working in dense networks of fine lines and cross-hatching, Giger gives the scenes an oppressive intensity. These are not straightforward illustrations of Sade’s prose, rather visual responses to its atmosphere of excess, confinement and transgression.