Contemporary art star
Around the 2000s, Belgian artist Wim Delvoye (born in 1965) was one of the contemporary art stars who loved to cause controversy. He ran a farm in China where he reared and tattooed pigs, whose skins he then sold. He also indelibly marked a human being who voluntarily became a walking work of art.
All his energy for collecting
Wim Delvoye
In recent times Wim has fallen off the radar. He seemed to devote all his energies to collecting, as a passionate accumulator of all kinds of things from old masters to coin collection. So he was perfectly placed to revisit the vast and varied collections at Geneva’s Museum of Art and History.
600 works
In doing so he follows Ugo Rondinone, who did a brilliant job in 2023 (see the report about Ugo Rondinone here). In Wim’s case he’s selected 600 works of all genres and all formats arranged in dialogue with works that have come from his imagination, along with others from his collection and copies used for the occasion.
Delvoye Pop Spirit
Wim Delvoye
“I met with all the museum experts and I discovered incredible things,” he says enthusiastically. Delvoye’s Pop spirit is a spectacular success. The most interesting space is the huge room full of paintings and sculptures, ancient and modern, which he uses as a playground. He’s constructed a marble run with large balls that roll around through metal tubes.
Going one ear…
Wim Delvoye
They even pass through an old sculpture in poor condition depicting a Catholic figure. The balls literally go in one ear before going out another – an allusion to the famous expression. Elsewhere they pierce a cheap version of a Picasso painting.
Philosophical vandalism
Wim Delvoye
What’s confusing is that the artist has placed this copy opposite a real painting by Pablo. Wim “blasphemes” with these icons of art, and a bit with religion too. The museum’s director Marc-Olivier Wahler speaks more elegantly about “philosophical vandalism”.
The Three Graces
Antonio Canova
In this noisy chaos produced by the metallic balls hurtling from one artwork to the next, around the exhibition we also find well-preserved masterpieces such as a plaster for study by the famous Venetian sculptor Antonio Canova, “The Three Graces”.
So many questions
Wim Delvoye
The show raises many questions. Who made what? Where do we direct our respect and interest faced with these artworks presented without distinction? And why this giant marble run game?
Challenging the hierarchy
Delvoye replies: “I like to challenge the hierarchy of things. And all boys like marbles.” Before concluding: “The audience will be huge!” As a final wink he’s called the exhibition “The Order of Things”.
Until 16 June. www.mahmah.ch/
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