‘Lapin’ is French for rabbit, ‘la pine’ for prick, the erect male penis, hence the title of this portfolio, started in the summer of 2008 and which has grown ever since.

It started with the day that Patrick Jannin decided to draw a man with a rabbit’s head, which he did and found it funny, but then what to do with this rabbit? Well, what rabbits usually do when they are not eating. Rabbits fuck. This lustful little animal was going to give it their all, without any limit and without shame, and Jannin was going to do the same.

Lapin(e)s is an ode to life and pleasure, like those erotic scenes that decorated the loggias of Roman soldiers who could relax by gazing at sex scenes on their return from combat, or the frescoes in the hospitals of Paris created for the same purpose.

As Patrick explains, ‘Beyond these purely down-to-earth considerations, this gesture of putting an animal’s head on a human body has turned out to be one of the most important shifts I have made in my work so far. Many other creatures have come from it, so I am now working on a new series called Hic Sunt Leones, all about hybrid animals with combinations of bodies from who knows what depths of the imagination.’

He is also clear that this freedom of expression is also a political gesture. ‘At a time when the well-meaning morality is coming back to ruin our lives, censoring this, banning that, politicians appearing to be nostalgic for the Inquisition, it is more necessary than ever to put our normally-hidden body parts in front of these bigots, shouting that we are not immoral, we are alive!’