Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Wim Delvoye: Cloaca, Ghent, 2000, n.p. (illustrated); K. Beirnaert and W. Delvoye, Wim Delvoye: New Cloaca & Improved, New York, 2001, p.63 (illustrated)
Catalogue Essay
Wim Delvoye’s body of work revolves around transforming utilitarian objects and using materials and processes mostly found in the field of applied arts. These include hand-painting tiles, stained glass and woodcarving – all of which are art forms that are becoming increasingly rare.
Executed in 1990, Mosaic 90-144-CLA is a primary example of Delvoye’s painted and glazed tiles. Forcing the viewer into phenomenological exchange with the artwork is predominant in Delvoye's execution. In these tiled "floor-plates", Delvoye decorates and transforms them through motifs, making them a platform of messages, from which he expresses his artistic practice. They are a nexus, in which different elements of Delvoye’s iconography are exposed – they are interwoven into patterns embodying the methodological idea of semiotics and analytical theory – in which the spectator is left to make sense of the "tattooed" tiles.