Berlinde DE BRUYCKERE

(born 1964 Ghent, Belgium)

Since the 1990’s, de Bruyckere has worked in the context of figurative sculpture. She has experimented with the use of organic materials such as wax, wood, wool, blankets as well as horse skin and hair. Inspired by images drawn from the media as well as reports from war correspondents, Bruyckere creates deeply moving works of deformed bodies and body-parts out of wood and wax, the vulnerability of which she sometimes draws attention to by using overlays of paint and bandages. Their unmediated brutality challenges the viewer, drawing him or her into an imagined moment of death, or pain or torture, without affording the viewer the possibility of intervention. Her works are deliberately confronting and hard to access. Her hard-to-reach works, with their sense of oppressive anonymity, both draw us in and keep us at a distance.

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Berlinde DE BRUYCKERE
Elie 2009
Fundació Sorigué, Lleida, Spain