The mysterious Wim Delvoye is a wizard of sculptural anomalies that bend Gothic forms into snide homage’s to the ornamental relics of the past. With cantankerous irony Delvoye appropriates, twists, and ultimately bastardizes the highly sophisticated medieval forms. Dusting off the cobwebs of 12th to 16th century history, he confounds us with deviant variations of lowbrow associations, baroque opulence, and a decisive Rabelaisian coup de grace.
Inside the gallery’s three intimate room spaces are remixed selections from the notorious ‘Au Louvre’ exhibition. They elaborate on Delvoye’s obsessions with excess, precision and decadence.
A perverse beauty cobbled from myth and folklore informs the pedestal-sized array of objets d’art; a careening dump truck extending forth like an open accordion and an equally elaborate cement mixer implies the laborious hauling of materials to and fro in the pursuit of immortal Gothic architectural design. Delvoye irreverently claims this iconography his own and does as he wishes with contemporary means of production. Likewise the ornately carved rubber tires reclaimed from the scrapheap are now indulgently transformed from utilitarian object into the purely decorative.