Berlinde De Bruyckere - Kunstmuseum In Switzerland

  
'The Mystery of the Body. Berlinde De Bruyckere
in Dialogue with Lucas Cranach and Pier Paolo Pasonli'

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s films revolve around the topics of life and death. They display sexuality, violence, and death as forces that determine our lives. The figures in his films are portrayed as reclining when they are either exhausted from the sexual act or dead, while some just lie asleep and defenseless. Berlinde De Bruyckere engages with such figures in her most recent work. Into One-Another I. To P.P.P. (2010) shows a woman lying on her side with her torso ripped open. The sculpture lies in an old display cabinet as if it were a human specimen. The way the figure is exhibited oscillates between revealing, paying tribute to, and protecting this waxen being. For the first time the ar- tist has left the different stages of the sculptural process visible, as we can observe in the foot with its several overlapping casts of the toes. A realistic finish has grown secondary to the relevance of the creative process. The bodies of wax thus reveal a struggle of forces: We simultaneously perceive the realistic effect of skin color and cor- poral form, or the alienating impact of the missing limbs and distorted body. The absent faces contribute to our feeling of alienation. The ar- tist states that she wants to keep beholders from being transfixed by faces in the sculptures, to prevent them from only fleetingly regarding the waxen bodies and other parts. Thus the viewer can communicate with the sculpture as a whole and not only with its face because the artist believes that faces would make her sculptures too accessible, taking away some of their mystery.
In the second figure of the series Into One-Another II. To P.P.P. (2011), the prostrate torso on the ground is propped on its knees and shoul- ders. Again the artist has discarded the head and arms. The posture
reminds us of some of the figures we know from Pasolini’s films. An exceptional detail in this series is that the viewer is able to peer deep into the inner part of the three-dimensional figures. Repeatedly the artist forms bodies with gaping wounds that underscore where the body fragments were joined together. The openings have a metapho- rical character: They make us conscious of the inner being, its hollow- ness and darkness. The wounds signify emptiness and loneliness for the artist. As De Bruyckere pointed out, in the back of her mind she was thinking of black holes that irretrievably absorb all knowledge. Into One-Another III. To P.P.P. (2011), one of the last of the sculptu- res in the Pasolini series, seems to be representing the most literal rendering of the notion «Into One-Another». In it two figures rise from the floor of the glass cabinet, kneeling parallel to one another in the same attitude and supported by a single arm. We cannot say if the two figures are fighting, copulating, or nestling against one another in a gesture of compassion. From every point of view the sculpture pre- sents a different interpretation without totally excluding the others. Both figures are casts taken from one of De Bruyckere’s favorite mo- dels, the dancer Eli. The sculpture’s ambiguity alludes to the intricate narratives in Pasolini’s films. Like them it shows how sexual desire can swiftly evolve into brutal violence, and thereby celebrates the cont- radictory diversity and vitality of life. On the other hand, the figures in the sculpture also represent Pier Paolo Pasolini’s inner conflicts and doubts as a person and as an artist.