Budapest - Ernst Museum - Wim Delvoye

BUDAPEST - ERNST MUSEUM - WIM DELVOYE
16.02 > 23.03.2008

You can love it or hate it: Wim Delvoye, enfant terrible of the contemporary scene, makes art that cannot go unnoticed. These provocative works, which make emphatic use of antagonisms, flout conventions and dogmas. Delvoye's art celebrates paradox, which is based on the Belgian surrealist tradition, the conjoining of two different elements/ideas in the same work. The gas cylinders painted in the style of Delft porcelain; the teak wood concrete mixer with baroque ornamentation; painted glass windows with sex scenes; excavators in the style of gothic cathedrals: they all reference, in their peculiar manner, the history of Flemish art.

His creative methods extend from simple drawing to real tattoo, from stuffed animals to bronze casts, from installation to live pigs, from lipstick marks to X-ray photos. If his works are often heavy, massive, they are always vibrant with playful ideas and an ironic overtone.
Beside the pigs tattooed with elaborately detailed Harley-Davidson and Walt Disney motifs, his probably best-known work is Cloaca, which he has prepared in eight versions. The large installation is a complex device that models human digestion. It has a mouth, a stomach, a duodenum and a pancreas, containers with enzymes, and a belt conveyor, which produces, when regularly fed, the end result, i.e. excrement.

More information:
www.lowfesztival.hu
www.ernstmuzeum.hu

Image:
© Wim Delvoye