New York, NY: 10 April 2013 - Sperone Westwater is pleased to present an exhibition of recent laser-cut stainless steel and bronze sculptures by Wim Delvoye. Known and described as a provocative and subversive artist, Delvoye’s work celebrates paradox, building on the Belgian Surrealist tradition of combining seemingly unrelated elements and engaging diverse provocative conceptual themes. By referencing Gothic, Baroque, and Rococo artistic conventions, and reconfiguring religious icons, Delvoye upends the creative process.

This is the artist’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery. Last year, Delvoye was invited by the Musée du Louvre in Paris to show his works in the context of the museum’s collection in the Napoleon III apartments as well as under the I.M. Pei pyramid on the Cour Carrée.

Suspended from the gallery’s ceiling will be a monumental 6-meter high Gothic tower made of stainless steel, Suppo (scale model 1:2), 2010. Tall, spiraling, and slender, this work combines Delvoye’s recent experiments in twisted, anamorphosed sculptures and his earlier Gothic works. Also to be installed is a large-scale polished bronze sculpture, Dual Möbius Quad Corpus, 2010, which depicts contorted crucifixes in a Möbius band – a single closed continuous curve with a twist.

A suite of nickeled bronze sculptures, including Daphnis & Chloë Rorschach works from 2012, reactivates the mythological figures of nineteenth-century academic sculptures by Mathurin Moreau, among others. Delvoye employs computerized reproduction techniques and then twists and further morphs their Baroque and Rococo forms even further. One half of the sculpture is a mirror image of the other, reiterating the principle of Rorschach plates.

Born in Belgium in 1965, Delvoye currently lives and works in Ghent, Belgium. The artist had gained international recognition through his participation in major exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale in 1990 and 1999, Documenta IX in 1992, and particularly, through his presentation of “Cloaca” at the New Museum, New York in 2002. Other recent solo exhibitions have been held at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy (2009); Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain (MAMAC), Nice, France (2010); Musée Rodin, Paris, France (2010); Palais des Beaux-Arts (BOZAR), Brussels, Belgium (2010-2011); the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart Tasmania, Australia (2012); and the aforementioned Musée du Louvre (2012). Delvoye’s work is in public collections worldwide.

There will be a reception for the artist on 10 May from 6 - 8 pm. For more information as well as images, please contact Aurelia Rauch at +1 212 999 7337 or aurelia@speronewestwater.com.