Caterpillar Scale Model #5

"In his art, Wim Delvoye gleefully cultivates the paradox. With each parody he also eludes to something profound, with every provocation he simultaneously expresses some deep affection. He operates on the opposite side of ambivalence. Instead, Delvoye always remains unusually explicit in his interests and themes, no matter how improper or unfashionable they might appear. Thus, when he presents a certain part of his oeuvre as his 'Gothic Works,' he obviously refers to all meanings of the term at once and all with equal intensity. Delvoye seems to be just as fascinated by the historical achievements of that particular era, as he is by the more contemporary interpretation of 'Gothic' as a denominator for a certain stylization of horror. Besides, the impurity of this signifier was there from early on. 'Gothic' was a pejorative term for medieval architecture that prevailed in Italian art-historical writings from around 1500. And although the denigrating connotations with the supposedly barbarian culture of the Goths have all been straightened out since then, the 'politically incorrect' term itself has never been abandoned (apart from, say, in a recent Oxford History of Art). Precisely this uneasy association of an aesthetic experience of the highest refinement with a very basic emotion like fear is probably what stimulates Delvoye to return to the Gothic in his work time and again" (E. Carels, "Dark Light," reproduced at www.cloaca.be).