Wim Delvoye (°1965) is an international artist living in in Belgium and the UK. His art upends the structures of the art world, while extending the possibilities of what a work of art can represent. It is a fusion of philosophical ideas, an experimental approach to the use of materials and a deep immersion in the techniques of craftsmanship.
Early 1980s Delvoye’s entry in the world of art did not go unnoticed: painting heraldic emblems on ironing boards, Delft patterns on gas canisters and placing stained-glass windows in goalposts, his hybrid works combined craft and concept to play out the opposition between contemporary art and pop culture. As of the 90s Delvoye radicalised the critical function of art, exploring the boundaries of commodity art, by tattooing live pigs and starting his Cloaca-project, thus thematising the uselessness of the artefact and the ambivalence of art and commerce.The body of Gothic works produced since 2001 gives a new impulse to the medieval Gothic by interpreting it with contemporary themes. Applying computerized modern technology to traditional crafts he creates monuments of ordinary objects like bulldozers. His ever-growing Gothic Towers have been displayed at Musée Rodin and Bozar a.o. His work has been included in major group exhibitions as the Venice Bienniale, Shangai Biennale and Documenta IX, and has been the subject of many solo exhibitions at, a.o., Centre Pompidou, the Louvre, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and the New Museum.

Production

Function