(In Search Of) The Perfect Lover

The fragility of the drawing shows the contradictory aspect of creativity that both creates and cuts, and is both an inscription and a registration.

These conflicts come afore in the very diverging oeuvres of Bourgeois, Dumas, McCarthy and Pettibon. They all work round themes like eroticism, sexuality, longing, conflicts and fears. Sexuality here is a metaphor for the creative that tries to express itself through metaphors and an unhampered style that does not deny the narrow bond between violence and death.

The title of the exhibition was originally made in collaboration with Matthias Winzen and first shown at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden. It quotes in the first place a series of drawings by Marlene Dumas and points to the ambiguous relationship between the fragile drawing and the injury of the sheet of paper.

The title can however also be interpreted as a search for a perfect (other) body. This notion is shown in the video work by Koen Theys’ Meeting (William Wilson), 2003 and L.A. Raevens’ Nature’s Choice that is added especially for the show at MDD.