Koller - PostWar & Contemporary AUKTION Donnerstag, 1. Juli 2021, 17.00 Uhr

3519* WIMDELVOYE (Wervik/Belgium 1965–lives and works in Brighton) Jesus Twisted. 2006. Bronze, patinated in black. At the bottom of the cross with the incised signature, date and number: WDelvoye 2006 3/3. 396 × 102 × 42 cm. The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by the Studio WimDelvoye, Brighton, May 2020. We thank the studio for its kind support. Provenance: - Artist‘s studio. - Deweer Art Gallery, Netherlands (verso with the label). - Private collection Belgium. The conceptual artist WimDelvoye was born in Belgi- um in 1965. His focus is the representation of aesthetic opposites, and the contradictions they produce are often provocative. Characterised by humour and subversive irony, he questions the established value systems of consumer society. His works are controversial, which is his core ob- jective. Annoying the viewer is part of his artistic repertoire. Through his art, things which are uncomfortable or critical of institutions can be presented visually. With a good deal of profound wit, he mixes the profane and the sublime in his works. The banal becomes art through ornament, and folk art becomes museum quality. Tradition and utopia meet, as well as craft and high tech. His penchant for monumental art, his curiosity, his intuitive enthusiasm for the strange are what characterise the work of WimDelvoye. His works are subject to a chain of ideas, led by two principles. Firstly, the fact that the function of an everyday object can be easily recognised. Secondly, the misrepresentation of these objects through the artist’s adaptation. Delvoye thus brings together different styles from art history, primarily from the local tradition of Gothic and Rococo in a contemporary version. This is how his series of twisted sculptures function, made in bronze or silver, in which the body of Christ is rotated around an elliptical cross. The supporting cross sculptures are cast in different forms: circles, infinite Möbius bands or, as in the work presented here, in the form of a DNA double helix. WimDelvoye creates the crucifixes with reference to genetics, geometry, or topology, until he finds a flowing form. The continual stream in his sculptures embodies the same principle of the cycle of the tortured and resurrected Christ. The clothes and Christ’s crown of thorns are taken from traditional iconography of the crucifixion. CHF 60 000 / 80 000 (€ 54 550 / 72 730) | 117