M HKA Ensembles

Installation

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. S0297).

This installation by Chinese artist Gu Dexin consists of a plexiglass box containing a male and female vibrator. Between the two vibrators is a large piece of meat. The male vibrator partially penetrates the piece of meat. A piece of meat comes out of the other side of the lump, into which a part of the female vibrator disappears. The artist uses real meat in his installation. This sits to rot in the box. The spectator can observe this process through the plexiglass and, if he wishes, can appreciate the smell of the decomposition process via four pipes connected to the box. At the end of these pipes, found at different locations in the museum, there is a tap that may be opened. In this way, visitors can get a whiff. By stepping on a pedal under the box, the public can also set the installation in motion. The art work seems to be composed of contradictions and incongruities. On the one side there is the artificial, the plastic, the vibrators. On the other side is the organic, the natural, the meat. Nevertheless, a penis and vagina are body parts and thus meat, as well. Here they’ve become plastic utensils. Such an image evokes the body reduced to agent of consumption, but on the other hand we have the rotting meat that is impossible to consume. An indictment of the sex industry? A footnote to the (im)possibility of the union of man and woman? A contemporary memento mori? Dexin lets viewers draw their own conclusions.