Wim Delvoye | SeXrays

Wim Delvoye 

SeXrays

Luxembourg: Beaumont Public, 2002

[94] pp., 30.5 x 23 cm., spiral-bound

Edition of 220

Published to accompany an exhibition of the same name, this title features twenty-five X-ray images of sex acts on acetate sheets from aluminum cibachromes, held together by spiral binding underneath a card cover book. With the help of a radiologist, the artist invited several friends to paint themselves with small amounts of barium and perform explicit sexual acts in medical X-ray clinics.

"The first x-rays were done in 1999, or 98, but then I made some very good ones in 2000-2001, and that was when I was showing the Cloaca machine – a large installation that turns food into feces. That was in 2000. Then I went to New York in 2001, I was in the New Museum – so I was immersed in that math and science kind of stuff. I was much more into bronzes, and other types of sculptures. But at that time, everyone’s fascination was for science, medical, clinical things, the human body, and x-ray machines. X-ray machines were fun, and I returned to that. As soon as I got the Cloaca machine finished, I went back to the x-rays.

[...]

A lot of my work, in general is machine-like; we make spud guns, we make shit machines. It is not why I started to do x-rays. I’m thinking of a movie where Jeremy Irons plays two characters in the film [David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers from 1988].  From the beginning of the movie, you know that this is going to end up wrong. There’s these twin brothers, and there was this really strange sexual tension. I was aware of that movie when we were doing these x-rays – you have science and the medical, contrasting with human feeling and romance. By the way, only later I realized I could never do the sex x-rays in the United States. This country is so religious. Doctors are so worried about being sued. There’s a certainly prudent attitude in the United States. For example, I needed doctors, and the doctor I found was so adamant to participate. He was astonished that he’d never thought to do that. He happened to be in his midlife crisis. And it was also funny – I put my penis in the mammography machine, and he said, “Look, I’ve been here for years and never thought to put my penis in this machine.” I thought, that’s the first thing I think of. I opened his eyes to his own clinic!”

- Wim Delvoye, interviewed by Andrea Blanch