seXrays
Delvoye, Wim
Luxembourg. beaumontpublic. 2002
Wim Delvoye's legendary artist book / catalogue of pornographic x-rays.
From the edition limited to 220 unnumbered copies.
Wim Delvoye, the Belgian neo-conceptual artist, is known perhaps most famously for his work tattooing pigs (displaying both live animals and the flayed skins of dead ones) and for his series of 'Cloaca' machines that mimic the human digestive system; the machines - there are multiple versions with titles such as 'Cloaca Original', 'Cloaca Turbo', 'Cloaca Quattro', 'Cloaca Professional' and so on - are fed and produce faeces. In 2001, Delvoye, aided by a radiologist and collaborators painted with small amounts of barium, made x-rays of the performance of explicit sexual acts in a Belgian medical clinic. The resultant images, the 'seXrays' of the present work, were then displayed in Gothic window frames replacing stained glass and were printed on aluminium as cibachromes.
The cibachromes were exhibited at beaumontpublic in Luxembourg in 2002 in the exhibition 'seXrays' from June 29th to October 5th. The same images are present, on clear acetate, in the present artist book, issued as the catalogue for the exhibition. The text includes two essays, by Peter Bexte in German, 'Die Göttliche Komödie der seXrays' (The Divine Comedy of the seXrays) and Olivier Goetz in French, 'seXrays de Wim Delvoye: un rayon de bonheur' (seXrays by Wim Delvoye: a Ray of Happiness). The scarce booklet with English text is also included, inserted loose.
'seXrays' is scarce and we trace copies at the Tate in the UK, the Bibliothèque Kandinsky in France, Princeton in the US and two copies in Germany (at the Kunstbiblio Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and Kunst- und Museumsbibliothek der Stadt) only.
From the edition limited to 220 unnumbered copies.
Wim Delvoye, the Belgian neo-conceptual artist, is known perhaps most famously for his work tattooing pigs (displaying both live animals and the flayed skins of dead ones) and for his series of 'Cloaca' machines that mimic the human digestive system; the machines - there are multiple versions with titles such as 'Cloaca Original', 'Cloaca Turbo', 'Cloaca Quattro', 'Cloaca Professional' and so on - are fed and produce faeces. In 2001, Delvoye, aided by a radiologist and collaborators painted with small amounts of barium, made x-rays of the performance of explicit sexual acts in a Belgian medical clinic. The resultant images, the 'seXrays' of the present work, were then displayed in Gothic window frames replacing stained glass and were printed on aluminium as cibachromes.
The cibachromes were exhibited at beaumontpublic in Luxembourg in 2002 in the exhibition 'seXrays' from June 29th to October 5th. The same images are present, on clear acetate, in the present artist book, issued as the catalogue for the exhibition. The text includes two essays, by Peter Bexte in German, 'Die Göttliche Komödie der seXrays' (The Divine Comedy of the seXrays) and Olivier Goetz in French, 'seXrays de Wim Delvoye: un rayon de bonheur' (seXrays by Wim Delvoye: a Ray of Happiness). The scarce booklet with English text is also included, inserted loose.
'seXrays' is scarce and we trace copies at the Tate in the UK, the Bibliothèque Kandinsky in France, Princeton in the US and two copies in Germany (at the Kunstbiblio Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and Kunst- und Museumsbibliothek der Stadt) only.
[15 leaves of thick paper (text) + 8 leaves of thin paper of smaller format (English text) + 51 leaves of acetate: 74 leaves; pp. 79, (i); 15]. Small folio. (306 x 228 mm). Printed title, text (essays, exhibition history and so on - see below) in German or French and with 25 cibachrome prints on clear acetate, each with title beneath and each with additional clear acetate guardleaf; also included, inserted loose, is an additional printed booklet with the translated text in English. Spiral bound with thick black rubber wrappers as issued, loose in publisher's stiff white printed card boards with large 'X' in black to front cover, publisher's credit to rear and titles to spine.
#48513
