Wim Delvoye (born 1965 in Wervik, West Flanders) is a Belgian installation artist and sculptor.

Early life

Delvoye was raised in Wervik, in West Flanders, Belgium. Although he did not have a religious upbringing, he was influenced by the Roman Catholic architecture that surrounded him. Delvoye has said that the pessimistic expectations for Belgian art students freed him, essentially making him realize that he "had nothing to lose". MUDAM, in Luxembourg; and the Museum Tinguely, in Basel, Switzerland.

In 1992, Delvoye presented his work, Mosaic, at Documenta IX, a symmetrical display of glazed tiles featuring photographs of his own excrement. A ceiling-mounted version of the Cloaca machine was built specifically for Tasmania's Museum of Old and New Art's permanent collection.

Delvoye has tattooed pigs as art beginning in the 1990s. Delvoye described the process of tattooing a live pig, "we sedate it, shave it and apply Vaseline to its skin".

Delvoye also creates "gothic" style work. In 2001, Delvoye, with the help of a radiologist, had several of his friends paint themselves with small amounts of barium, and perform explicit sexual acts in medical X-ray clinics. He then used the X-ray scans to fill gothic window frames instead of classic stained glass. Delvoye suggests that radiography reduces the body to a machine.), customized in seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque style. These structures juxtapose "medieval craftsmanship with Gothic filigree".

In a 2013 show in New York City, Delvoye showed intricate laser-cut works combining architectural and figurative references with shapes such as a Möbius band or a Rorschach inkblot.

Selected public collections

  • SMAK, Ghent, Belgium
  • Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA
  • Centre Pompidou, Paris, France

References

  • Wim Delvoye's website