We Are All Flesh
[Ghent], MER. Paper Kunsthalle, 2013.
Large octavo, 143 pages with numerous colour illustrations (full- or double-page) of De Bruyckere's sculptures.
Colour pictorial card covers with the authors and title on the spine (and 'DW B 157/5, special edition' on the front cover); rear cover lightly marked; an excellent copy.
The title page is signed by the author, the first person to win the Booker Prize twice (in 1983 and 1999); he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003. 'The sculptural work of Berlinde De Bruyckere, representing Belgium in the 2013 Venice Biennale, imperiously demands a response from whoever faces it. This explains why literary authors in particular are so attracted to her compositions of distorted parts of humans and horses, testimony to terror and solace, cruel death and the sublime. She empties the bodies: through the holes the spectator sees the dark interior, at once repulsive and alluring. In the spaces of resonance carved out by De Bruyckere writers can practise their crafts of creation, not by writing about the objects, but by placing creative texts next to them. The writer does not appropriate any of the artwork's meanings by explaining it, but rather adds significance by answering art with art. Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee accepts this challenge. In concert with the author, De Bruyckere selects fragments bespeaking exceptional beauty from his impassioned and unsettling novels. This way they craft a five-part composition of image and word which illuminates the dark world of their works from the inside out' (Hugo Bousset, quoted on the rear cover). 'MER. Paper Kunsthalle is a non-profit organisation that was founded to investigate the book medium as an art medium or as a place for exhibiting art' (publisher's website).
Item #125571
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