Berlinde De Bruyckere, Marthe, 2008, Wax, epoxy, metal, wood and glass, 280 x 172.5 x 119.5 cm.
Art Tattler says this of Marthe:
"In Marthe (2008) Berlinde De Bruyckere (Born 1964, Ghent – Lives and works in Ghent) shows a body in duality, disgusting but still half-human, a hand found in its twig-like limbs reminiscent of Ovidian-style transformation; it too, despite its lifelike physicality, is sexless, headless, inert, a re-imagined object. “It is not because you never see a head that it looks like it has been cut off. It is, rather, that I no longer think the presence of a head is necessary. The figure as a whole is a mental state. The presence or absence of a head is irrelevant.”
"Their lack of eyes and sex emphasised the importance of seeing each body as a whole. A few years later she turned to the horse as subject, covering pseudo-anatomical works in familiar materials that inspire both a sense of nightmarish displacement and of visual comfort, of animal suffering and material abstraction.
The horse pieces are eyeless [K36 (The Black Horse)], 2003) and sometimes headless too (K21, 2006). The glossiness of their skin underscores all of the things that are covered and hidden, a sensual, almost tender casing for these uncomfortable shapes."
