Michael

Have you heard of bad boy Belgian artist Wim Delvoye? He’s a sort of a latter-day Claes Oldenburg, but then I always liked Claes Oldenburg. Obviously a joker, he has gone in for such exercises as a full-sized wooden copy, elaborately guilded, of a cement mixer:

Rococo Cement Mixer

He revisited this theme more recently by creating a full-size, wooden replica of a cement truck, fussily ornamented like spooky Old World furniture in your Grandmother’s house.

Grandma's Cement Truck

What can I say, he seems to like cement. Changing media to photography, he took pictures of massive cliffs towering above villages and added (presumably by computer) what appear to be enormous, neatly incised messages to the rock face, like inscriptions carved into Roman buildings. Of course, these imperial, more-than-billboard sized messages are utterly banal in Delvoye's work: “SUSAN, OUT FOR A PIZZA, BACK IN FIVE MINUTES."

Mr. Delvoye seems to have made quite a stir with his latest installation piece, entitled “Cloaca” in which food is pulverized, subjected to various enzymes, and comes out as something rather close to shit. While I wouldn’t hurry out to see this, I grant you that it is the kind of thing that will get you written about—and I suppose that’s the point. (Hey, I’ll forgive a lot in artists who have a sense of humor…so few do.)

Cheers,

Friedrich