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9/12/2011

Wim Delvoye

Museum of Old and New Art - Mona, Hobart Tasmania

“Don’t fight popular culture; instead grab it and chew it.” Wim Delvoye

The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) will host a Wim Delvoye exhibition starting December 10 and running forever. At least MONA would like that but it will have to close, because we will have to return the art, and that happens March 26, 2012. Except for a Gothic-style, full size, laser-cut corten steel Cement Truck (2008) that will stay on our roof until August.

At MONA we love the work of Wim Delvoye (b. Wervik, Belgiium, 1965). Not all our visitors agree, however. Cloaca Professional, 2010, is one of the most hated in our collection. As with all Delvoye’s work it provides food (poo) for thought; it is the most pondered. We know this because our ‘O’ interpretation device allows visitors to “love” and “hate” a work, and we can also monitor the time they spend with it.

The business of being human, Wim suggests, is worthy of artistic comment. He probes our identity not in terms of black and white, men and women but at a much deeper level. He contrasts us with mice and bacteria. He sees us as an engine for surviving and asks: is that all we are?

We “make hay while the sun shines”. Our endeavour sets us apart from animals and machines. Or perhaps this superficial difference is a veneer of culture veiling biological compulsions. Maybe, like Cloaca, all we do is make waste where the sun don’t shine.

Delvoye’s work can be disgusting or beautiful and is often both. There will be more than 100 works for visitors to categorise, from his intricately hand carved tyres to X-ray images of copulating couples and rats, tattooed pigskins, Tattoo Tim, bronze sculptures, video works and more cloacae.

David Walsh, founder of MONA says: “Wim is the only contemporary artist I was familiar with before I became familiar with contemporary art…. For Wim, making art is a human thing, and it carries with it the burden of human culture and biology…. Wim’s world is the world we inhabit but don’t notice, portrayed with an ironic twist so that the obvious is cast into sharp relief and we see it for the first time. It turns out that everything isn’t what it seems to be.”

The exhibition is curated by David Walsh, Olivier Varenne, with Nicole Durling and the MONA team. A catalogue will be published to coincide with the exhibition with essays by Bernard Marcade (art critic, philosopher and writer) and David Walsh.

Wim Delvoye, the artist, according to Facebook: “Wim Delvoye is an international artist whose entry in the world of contemporary art - early 1980s - did not go unnoticed: painting heraldic emblems on ironing boards and shovels, Delft patterns on gas cannisters , and placing stained-glass windows in soccer goalposts, his works became hybrids, playing with the opposition between high and low, between contemporary art and pop culture, combining both craft and concept…. He is disrespectful, ambiguous and eccentric, or to put in the words of writer Hélène Depotte: his is ‘the art of an equilibrist, a parable of extravagance and of technical mastery and its necessary fall’.”

Wim Delvoye has exhibited at the Venice Biennale (1990, 1999, 2009), Documenta (1990) and Visceral 3rd Moscow Biennale (2009). Recent solo exhibitions include Wim Delvoye: Torre, Guggenheim Collection, Venice (2009); Wim Delvoye: Dessins & Macquettes, MAMAC, Nice (2010); Wim Delvoye, Musee Rodin, Paris (2010); Knocking on Heaven’s Door, BOZAR, Brussels (2010). Group shows include Mythologies, Haunch of Venison, London (2009); The Endless Renaissance, Bass Museum of Art, Miami (2009); Bodies, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver (2010). After MONA, Delvoye will have a solo show at the Louvre, Paris, in 2012.

Openig 10 december

Museum of Old and New Art
655 Main Road Berriedale +61 Hobart Tasmania
Hours: wed-mon 10am-6pm
Ticket adult 20 dollars, concession 10 dollars

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