Wim Delvoye
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Wim Delvoye | |
|---|---|
 Wim Delvoye in 2019 | |
| Born | 1965 (age 59–60) |
| Education | Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Ghent, Belgium |
| Known for | Sculpture |
Wim Delvoye (born 1965 in Wervik, West Flanders)[1] is a Belgian installation artist and sculptor.
Early life
[edit]Delvoye was raised in Wervik, in West Flanders, Belgium. Although he did not have a religious upbringing, he was influenced by the Roman Catholic architecture that surrounded him.[2] Delvoye has said that the pessimistic expectations for Belgian art students freed him, essentially making him realize that he "had nothing to lose".[2]
Career
[edit]Delvoye's work has been presented in solo exhibitions at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art[3]; MUDAM, in Luxemburg.[4]; and the Museum Tinguely, inBasel, Switzerland. [5]
In 1992, Delvoye presented his work, Mosaic, at Documenta IX, a symmetrical display of glazed tiles featuring photographs of his own excrement.[2]
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Delvoye's Cloaca, is a mechanical installation that turns food into "feces". The food begins at a long, transparent bowl (mouth), travels through a number of machine-like assembly stations, and ends in hard matter which is separated from liquid through a cylinder.[2] Delvoye has stated that everything in modern life is pointless. The most useless object he could create was a machine that serves no purpose at all, besides the reduction of food to waste.[6] A ceiling-mounted version of the Cloaca machine was built specifically for Tasmania's Museum of Old and New Art's permanent collection.[7]
Delvoye has tattooed pigs as art beginning in the 1990s. Delvoye described the process of tattooing a live pig, "we sedate it, shave it and apply Vaseline to its skin".[8]
Delvoye also creates “gothic” style work. In 2001, Delvoye, with the help of a radiologist, had several of his friends paint themselves with small amounts of barium, and perform explicit sexual acts in medical X-ray clinics. He then used the X-ray scans to fill gothic window frames instead of classic stained glass. Delvoye suggests that radiography reduces the body to a machine.[2]
Delvoye also works in laser-cut steel to produce sculptures of utilitarian objects typically found in construction (like a cement truck[9]), customized in seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque style. These structures juxtapose "medieval craftsmanship with Gothic filigree".[10]
In a 2013 show in New York City, Delvoye showed intricate laser-cut works combining architectural and figurative references with shapes such as a Möbius band or a Rorschach inkblot.[11]
Selected public collections
[edit]- SMAK, Ghent, Belgium[12]
- Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands[13]
- Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA[1]
- MUDAM, Luxembourg[14]
- Centre Pompidou, Paris, France[15]
References
[edit]- ^ a b "Wim Delvoye". Guggenheim Museum (collection search. Retrieved 15 September 2025.
- ^ a b c d e Amy, Michaël (20 January 2002). "The Body As Machine, Taken To Its Extreme". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 May 2013.
- ^ Michel Dewilde : Wim Delvoye at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art ‘About continuous folding, connecting and twisting.’
- ^ "Wim Delvoye". English. 2 July 2016. Retrieved 28 March 2024.
- ^ "wim-delvoye | Museum Tinguely Basel". www.tinguely.ch. Retrieved 28 March 2024.
- ^ Grimes, William (30 January 2002). "Down the Hatch". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 May 2013.
- ^ "A "Subversive Disneyland" at the End of the World". Archived from the original on 12 January 2015.
- ^ Laster, Paul (30 September 2007). "Bringing Home the Bacon: Wim Delvoye". Sperone Westwater. ArtAsiaPacific. pp. 154–159. Archived from the original on 20 August 2013.
- ^ "Cement Truck". Archived from the original on 11 February 2012.
- ^ "Home". publicartfund.org.
- ^ Cashdan, Marina (16 May 2013). "New Provocations From the Belgian Bad Boy Wim Delvoye". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 May 2013.
- ^ "Wim Delvoye". SMAK Museum. Retrieved 15 September 2025.
- ^ "Wim Delvoye (Concrete Mixer)". Stedelijk Museum. Retrieved 15 September 2025.
- ^ "Wim Delvoye (Chapel)". MUDAM Museum. Retrieved 15 September 2025.
- ^ "Wim Delvoye (Collection search)". Centre Pompidou. Retrieved 15 September 2025.
External links
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