My profile:
For MT
Delvoye likes playing with his audience as much as with his artwork: His first exhibition in Russia eight years ago featured live pigs running around the Manezh to "scare" curator Vladimir Ovcharenko. "I think there's a taboo on recreation," Delvoye explains. "It's normal to X-ray, kill and brand pigs, but people have a big problem with entertainment. The art world is a protective cocoon against this."
His training as a painter only led to disenchantment with the form. "It's the only kind of art I don't do. I haven't got anything against it, but so often it's really very safe. Painting can be easily used to reconfirm what is already art."
Instead, Delvoye attempts to reappraise and reinvent what we consider art. Half of the exhibition consists of selections from Delvoye's trademark of tattooed pigskins, produced at his farm in China. Mickey Mouse and the Virgin Mary can be found next to Asian lettering, hearts inscribed with names of imaginary loved ones, skulls and the Harley-Davidson eagle.
"With the pigs, I am creating an atlas of all the trivialities that people cherish. I take these images to their logical extent, by detaching them from their meaning even more than they already are," said Delvoye.
"The pigs are actors in a story. Each one is different. I'll have a Communist pig, a Baroque pig. It's like writing a novel -- writers are not responsible for their characters' actions. They're stand-ins."
Delvoye feels a deep emotional bond with his subjects. "I never forget a pig. Their DNA and skin color are very similar to ours. If the lion is a king and the giraffe is a duke, the pig is a plebian. There's no nobility in a pig."
 for MT |  |
| |
Delvoye tattoos the pigs when they are young, and as the pig grows so does the tattoo. "My pigs are the only artworks that literally grow in value! It's a big metaphor for the art market. Most collectors are just dumb, rich people. I replace financial and symbolic value with biological value, and then I harvest. I'm a kind of art farmer."
Upstairs, a series of X-rays depict some of Delvoye's friends (and two pigs) in various sexual positions. Most prominent are those parts of the body that must have been furthest from the participants' minds: rib cages, roots of teeth, fingernails and brains. Again, the first effect is shock, even repulsion.
Delvoye agrees: "The nudity is absurd, nobody could get aroused by this. It's very mechanical. I'm asking, 'Where is the soul?'" Actions we ascribe deep meaning to, as with the symbols tattooed in pigskin, are shown as thoughtless processes.
The exhibition's physical centerpiece, shows a different side of Delvoye's thought process. A 5-meter-tall Gothic tower a year in the making, is intricately constructed on computers and laser-cut from stainless steel. Delvoye has previously built life-size diggers and dump trucks in the same style, and hopes to realize this model fully. "I'm trying to continue the Gothic mentality. It embodies verticalism, it defies gravity. For me, the Gothic is everywhere, it's a romantic state of being."
As with the pigs, Delvoye feels a natural affinity with Gothic architecture. "You can find ogives [elliptical ribs of arches overlying Gothic vaults] in DNA, it's strong, flexible, and detailed. Looking at a Gothic tower is a message from the past like looking at a star, when you're seeing something from a million years ago. Centuries from now, skyscrapers will disappear, but we'll still see Montmartre."
But even something so star-struck as Delvoye's tower comes from a sardonic look at the world, which he attributes to his home country. "All art is tribal. And Belgians are cowards, we always collaborate. We are genetically selected to go down in the mud when we hear the horses coming. My art is a sketch of our collaborative culture. You can see my postmodern indifference!"
"Wim Delvoye" runs to Oct. 25 at Diehl + Gallery One, located at 5/13 Smolenskaya Nab. Metro Smolenskaya.
4 / 5
