Tommy Wieringa

Berlinde de Bruyckere

Michaela Unterd©œrfer

Employing a range of sculptural media including wax, wood, wool, horse skin and hair, Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere works around the themes of vulnerability and extreme fragility--in people, animals and nature.

In the Woods There Were Chainsaws

J. M. Coetzee

Berlinde De Bruyckere's work prompts the viewer to respond. That is why it has a particular appeal for writers of literature: they are fascinated by the compositions of distorted parts of humans and horses that refer to horror and comfort, to a cruel death and the sublime. De Bruyckere empties the bodies. Through holes, the public notices the darkness of a world inside that both appeals and repels. There is space around her work that resonates and in which writers can indulge in creativity -not by writing about objects, but by juxtaposing the work with creative texts. The author does not remove meanings of the work by trying to explain it, but rather adds to its meaning by responding to art with art. Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee rises to this challenge: together with De Bruyckere he has chosen fragments from his impassioned and unsettling novels that are full of great beauty. Thus, the two present a composition of texts and images that from inside illuminates the dark world of their work.

We are All Flesh

Michael Mack

Gregor Muir

Ali Subotnick

This book focuses on recent sculptures and installations by Belgian artist Berlinde de Bruyckere and provides a rare and intimate glimpse into her studio and working process. De Bruyckere uses a range of sculptural media, including wax, wood, wool, horse skin, and hair which are combined to create compelling forms that suggest distorted human and animal bodies. Her figures are often faceless, malformed and fragmentary. They perch precariously on high stools or are suspended from the walls, ceiling or tall iron columns. At first their shape seems familiar although they resist interpretation, offering a disturbing vision of fragility and suffering and they appear vulnerable and violated, their skin stretched and broken. The works presented in the book invoke the Schmerzensmann, the eternal Man of Suffering, and focus on eight sculptures in wax, one of the artists preferred materials. The texture of the pallid wax suggests a skin so thin and fragile that it is almost translucent. Close inspection reveals subtly mottled hues and textures that imply vulnerability to heat and cold but also to the more intangible threat of violence and fear. Each of the eight sculptures is illustrated from many viewpoints, offering the chance to examine in detail their form, surface texture, spatiality and relation to the viewer.

Berlinde de Bruyckere

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