STUTTGART.- Between physicality and transience: Berlinde De Bruyckere meets Doris Salcedo and Teresa Margolles. Three female artists, each of whom has found her own powerful visual language for the unspeakable, are currently on view in “THIS IS TOMORROW” at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.
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Berlinde De Bruyckere: Khorós
English / French edition
A striking volume on Berlinde De Bruyckere’s sculptural practice, exploring the body, fragility, transformation, and haunting material presence.
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Berlinde De Bruyckere (born 1964) lives and works in Ghent and is one of Belgium’s most internationally renowned artists. Since the early 1990s, she has been developing a compelling body of work centered on human existence, the vulnerability of the body, and the tension between life and death. Her work is characterized by a deep sensitivity to images — whether from art history or current events — and reflects both collective and intimate experiences: from suffering, transience, and trauma to security and beauty.
A central interest of De Bruyckere lies in the physicality of the human body. Her intense engagement with this theme also influences the series “Need”. Here, body fragments formed in wax are combined with found, precisely arranged materials and displayed in old glass windows converted into display cases. With its fractures, injuries, and impressions, the wax appears almost like flesh, thereby blurring the boundary between the animate and the inanimate, between reality and imagination. The display case, with its fragile struts and old glass, is part of the overall ensemble and transforms the objects into corporeal apparitions that prompt every viewer to reflect on vulnerability and transcendence.
With the acquisition of “Need III, 2023–2024” by Berlinde De Bruyckere, the Friends of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart e. V. are now enabling a significant expansion of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart’s collection of contemporary art. This new acquisition underscores the ongoing commitment of the Friends of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart e. V. to securing outstanding artistic voices for the collection and introducing contemporary perspectives into the museum’s discourse.
As part of the collection presentation “THIS IS TOMORROW”, the installation “Need III, 2023–2024” will be shown in juxtaposition with works by Doris Salcedo and Teresa Margolles. Three female artists, each of whom has found her own powerful visual language for the unspeakable. The common themes of these three artists are: violence, loss and mourning. Therefore De Bruyckere selected specific Old Masters pieces, set them in a new context and create a connection between her own work: the crusifixion of Christ, modern day tragedies like the gun violence in American cities, Cartel violence and femicide.
Another key work by De Bruyckere is her series on paper “It almost seemed a lily”. The starting point for this was her encounter with the “Enclosed Gardens” (Hortus Conclusus) of the Augustinian Hospital Sisters in Mechelen. Their meticulously Designed Devotional boxes combine textiles, wax, wood, artificial flowers, and other materials, serving as intimate spaces of spiritual contemplation for the nuns. The subject of the wilting flower is the epitome of life and death united and however peaceful the flower collages may look, the brutal scratches in the carbon paper reveal something of a hidden violence. So, for De Bruyckere, they simultaneously symbolize places of desire and become starting points for a contemporary exploration of these themes.
Three works from this series are now currently on view in dialogue with two works from our Old Masters collection: For this, the artist has selected a diptych by Aelbert Bouts from the Staatsgalerie’s collection and placed it in juxtaposition with her works in the contemporary collection.
