Berlinde De Bruyckere

The work of Berlinde De Bruyckere is marked by corporality. Her drawings and sculptures are literally portrayals of bodies and shapes of bodies whose anatomy is often contorted and disfigured. According to Florent Bex, the work of Berlinde De Bruyckere is “about the disturbing beauty of repressed desires and fears, about the sublimation of death.” Even so, the work deals just as powerfully and succinctly with the theme of life. Her sculptures and drawings voice intimacy and sensuality – not in a banal kind of exhibitionism, but in a veiled and subdued manner. De Bruyckere frequently combines her figures with everyday objects, which she employs as pedestals or enclosures: tubs, tables or cabinets – worn household articles that bear the scars of time. Here we see life in its saddest expression of vulnerability. This is not the sublimation of death, but a desperate struggle to survive.