Atelier Van Lieshout

Salvation

2020

Mixed media
125 x 180 x 270 cm

One of Joep van Lieshout’s earliest sculptures, conceived in 1983, is an operating table that doubles as a chopping block with drains to recycle body fluids and concealed stilettos to cut the patient’s vertebra if necessary. Life saving easily turns into torture and execution. Our faith in the agents of rational science is questioned, as is the value of human life itself. A couple of Ebola outbreaks, the HIV crisis and a Covid-19 pandemic later, and Atelier Van Lieshout’s Salvation spells out a not so different future. Doctors are crusaders, priests and shamans all rolled into one: part healer, part executioner. Nurses provide care and sexually charged consolation.

Salvation (2020) was part of the following exhibition(s):
Form Follows Energy, LAGO / ALGO, Mexico City (MX), 2022
Fake Me Hard, AVL Mundo, Rotterdam (NL), 2021

For enquiries: please contact Atelier Van Lieshout via info@ateliervanlieshout.com