This is Wim Delvoye’s holiest work to day and not because it doesn’t involve tattooed pigs and shit factories. With Dual Möbius Quad Corpus — currently on view at his solo Sperone Westwater gallery show of laser-cut stainless steel and bronze sculptures — the Belgian Surrealist does something quite unique. The four twisted Christs warped around a single cross in an infinite loop vamp off some heavy, hefty Catholic symbology. It’s so opulently fucked, yet still unmistakable and iconic. As Blake Gopnik gushes…
What matters most about the piece is that it doesn’t read as pure and arbitrary surrealism. The object sets itself a goal, of sorts, and then achieves it in an orderly way. Looking at it, you are forever wanting to undistort its four life-size figures and “resurrect” them to a normal state, like the skull in Holbein’s Ambassadors.
But aside from visual anamorphic trickery, it’s full of pretty contradictions. It doesn’t just mesh olde Baroque conventions and religious insignia with ultra-modern chrome-esque bronze… It is literally the scientific symbol for infinity. Take that, Chris.
Wim Devloye, May 10 – June 28, Sperone Westwater, New York
