Berlinde de Bruyckere

Acquired from the artist by the present owner in 1991

Exhibition Catalogue, Ghent, S.M.A.K.; The Hague, Gemeentemuseum; Bregenz, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Berlinde de Bruyckere: Sculptures & Drawings. 2000 – 2014, 2015, p. 64, no. 1, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals some small punctures to the white mesh, and a small tear to one of the upper corners, which is in keeping with the artist's choice of found media.
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Best known for her painfully beautiful wax sculptures that thread along the lines of the macabre, Berlinde De Bruyckere is one of the most compelling visual artists working today. With considerable representation in public and private collections, the Belgium-born and -based artist’s work has gained significant critical acclaim on the international scene after her work Cripplewood represented Belgium at the 2013 Venice Biennale. She has since been dedicated a number of important solo exhibitions, notably at the S.M.A.K Museum in Ghent (2014), the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, the Kunsthaus Bregenz and Strasbourg’s Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain (2015). 

De Bruyckere’s seminal series of blanket works from the 1990s, of which the present lot is a remarkable example, is charged with the artist’s concern with a poetic treatment of vulnerability. At the time of its execution, images of the political conflict in former Yugoslavia and the Rwandan genocide flooded the press. Photographs of refugees wrapped in blankets were pinned on the wall of De Bruyckere’s studio in Ghent, competing for her attention amongst other newspaper clippings or more mundane memorabilia. She started using woollen blankets as source materials for sculptures or ambitious installations, embodying not only shelter and comfort but also dissimulation and suffocation. One of the artist’s first work with the medium was a pile of heavy blankets folded on a precariously wobbly stool, but her suggestion of protection or refuge through fabric constructions really deployed its full visual impact with the Dekenhuizen (‘Blanket Houses’ or ‘Blanket Homes’ in Flemish), with woven blankets over a steel structure. “To me, a blanket is a symbol of security. It has a soul, which usually has a positive connotation. A blanket tucks you in; you feel like the child sitting indoors while it’s raining outside. I also use the blanket as a negative object. You can give someone so much love and safety that it smothers him, that he can no longer find himself. Lying under a pile of blankets can be disorienting! I like to play with that ambiguity in my work.” (the artist quoted in De Pont Foundation for Contemporary Art, ww.depont.nl, online resource)