Exhibition • 15–27 March 2025 • Hong Kong

A cross centuries, the desire to reenact the human body has linked the learned, the mystical and the creative. From the idealised representations exemplified by the marble statuary of the classical tradition, to the modernist preoccupation with the fragmented and disintegrated body typical of Auguste Rodin and Alberto Giacometti, and the postmodern expansion of sculpture into a range of environmental and futuristic forms, the body is the space through which we come to see and understand our own nature. When French nobleman, revolutionary politician, philosopher and writer, Marquis de Sade expressed the primacy of the body in understanding the mystery of nature and spirituality, the human form became not simply a vessel, but a sacred entity. To Foucault, Sade articulated the epistemic shift from early modern thinking; representing the human body as the central subject, as opposed to an object reflected by a metaphysical outer author. Histories of sculpture typically favour the idealised, austere figures of antiquity, whose bodies seem to exist outside of time, space and experience. Yet, Sade would have us take physical pleasure in the sheer materiality of the sculpture of the human form; in the curve of a knee, the strong lines which anchor a thigh, and the curvature of a rib, with the body becoming an essential site of experience and transcendence. 

Whether whole, fragmented or implied, sculptures which explore the human figure inherently contain multitudes; expression and stillness, hard stone and softly arching curves, the physical and the metaphysical. Whilst Sade’s Juliette (1797) is primarily a story of the body’s capacity for depravity, his aligning of the body, the temple, and nature recognises the sanctity of the corporeal realm, and its essential relationship to the divine. The sculptural body – purgatorially animated between life and death – acts as a reminder of how the physical body shapes our understanding of the world and our place within in it. The fragmentation of antiquities, handed down through time, dug up from the earth and having lost much of their identity, serves as a reminder that the human body is not just an object of desire, but a site of suffering, pleasure and renewal. For hundreds of years, artists and collectors have looked to history, geography and the arts for inspiration – from Ancient Egypt, Classical Greece, the Roman Empire, and the Middle Ages, to the Americas, Africa, and the Far East – exploring these fragmented bodies in their search for the perfect means of combining ideal, antique beauty with the mysteries of nature. Whether it is the emotional quality of Michelangelo’s figures, their twisting forms and expressive force of non finito, or Giacometti’s animated limbs and extended frames, such art embraces the continuous virility of nature in their expression of movement and vitality.

In 1903, when Rodin saw a marble Head of a Young Woman, he could not contain his admiration for the Greek sculpture: “It’s life itself. It embodies all that is beautiful, life itself, beauty itself…So perfect that it is as disconcerting as nature itself” (Auguste Rodin, “Interview with M. Rodin: A Praxiteles Venus”, Morning Post, 28 May 1903). The sacred body, written in sculpture, becomes a vehicle for articulating the impulses of the soul, of passion, and an inexhaustible source of inspiration for the expression and reverence of nature. The sensation of being that is expressed through and by these figures presents the body as a vehicle for the realisation of its own sensual experiences. The undulating forms of Henry Moore’s reclining figures, head directed towards the spectator, offer an invitation to travel and explore a body transformed into a series of smooth and rounded surfaces. Sade, known for his exploration of sexuality and human desire, would certainly see these sculptural forms, with their soft surfaces of divine flesh and impossibly curving frames, as if they were daring one to desire them, and in this, accept the desires of the body.

In the tradition of Christian religious art, the sacred body and the sensual body are brought together through the body of Christ to inspire devotion for the magnanimity of God’s creation. The frequently twisting form, exposed sinews and dissolving curves of Christ’s body elevate the body to a site of reverence, both rapturous and decaying. The beauty of the religious sculpture recognises the body as part of a larger divine order, an extension and expression of nature. Beauty, in the Greek or Renaissance sense, becomes as Moore describes, “not a decoration to life, but an expression of the significance of life, a stimulation to greater effort in living.” (Henry Moore, “The Sculptor’s Aim”, republished in David Sylvester, ed. Henry Moore. Volume One, Sculpture and Drawing, 1921-1948. London 1957, p.30).

The body has historically been conceived as a vehicle for representing narratives, objects upon which the sanctity of divinity, the degradation of the soul and the potential for transcendence could be written. The elevation of the body to the status of “temple” by Sade would challenge this aesthetic presumption, positioning every movement and expression of the body as a means through which the divine is revealed. Intimately reconciled with the sacred, the body acts as corporeal catharsis, at once delicate and unwavering, emphatic and elusive, sensual and ineffable. As with Louise Bourgeois’ exploration of femininity, form and the body, there is a physical reconciliation of psychic forces, the spiritual interior made flesh. Bourgeois’ sculptural bodies are not generalised, idealised or otherworldly, but physical manifestations of an interiority more specific, moderated through individual experience. Fragmented and exaggerated forms deconstruct the body into symbolic and constituent parts, eroded, remade and returned in an image of the body which holds a deep resonance for the natural world, and our individual place within it.

When Marquis de Sade began writing in the late 18th century, he sought to destroy all illusions surrounding the human experience, be it historical, moral or religious. The naturalised relationship between body, spirituality and divinity is recast in his invocation, “Your body is the temple where Nature demands to be reverenced,” elevating the body to the revered status of nature. Through this entreaty, the sculptural body and the human form reconcile what could otherwise have remained disparate; the sensual body, the ideal body, and the divine.