photo: SAIKI Taku
The Wall of Ascending Angels
| Artist | Jan FABRE |
|---|---|
| Year | 1993 |
| Material/ Technique | jewel-beetles on iron net |
| Size/ Duration | H160 × W65 × D47cm |
| Copyright Notice | © Angelos bvba / Jan Fabre →クレジット情報についてはその他の同作家作品に関する解説・履歴を合わせて参照のうえ、確認すること（2023/08/14) |
| Year of acquisition/ donation | 2001（作品購入年月日：2001/04/020) |
| Description | Born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1958. Lives and works there. Jan Fabre has been extremely active since the 1980s in a range of genres including art, theater, opera, and per formance. Along with drawings based on his observations of insects and spiders and sculptures incorporating animal carcasses and stuffed specimens, he has also produced performances using blood and salt and poems. These various artistic pursuits, which are all connected, inquire into contemporary Christian culture and its meaning while confronting us with universal questions concerning such things as the basis of human existence, life and death, religion and science, and human beings and art. In creating his artwork, Fabre takes as materials his own physical gestures, his blood and other bodily fluids, bones, insect carcasses and stuffed animals, and also gives performances that draw upon his entomological expertise. His early work, "Le Petit Bagarreur" (The Little Street Fighter), is a self-portrait produced from a photograph of the artist at the age of twelve, depicting an attitude of Christ-like self-sacrifice paving the way to a new world. The layer of drawing pins covering his body symbolizes the tough protective layer necessary for the human skin that is so easily scarred and made to bleed, the armor that is needed in taking on the outside world, and the lumps of sugar protruding from his fist symbolize weapons for someone having to fight without them. In the work "Walking Leaves", two leaf insects are placed in the center of a piece of paper totally covered in lines of blue ballpoint pen. The repetitive blue lines generate an instinctive energy, and the contrast of this natural life-force with the insects’ corpses creates a quite unique effect. This materiality is developed "in The Wall of Ascending Angels", a dress whose surface is covered in innumerable jewel beetles. Referencing as it does the angel, that intermediary presence between gods and humans, this work uses the ‘extants’ of the dress and the beetle carcasses to draw attention to the ‘nonextants,’ drifting back and forward in the space between them. |
NOTES
This Collection Data page contains the works and materials in the collection of 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, as of April 1, 2018.
Artists are listed alphabetically by artist’s surname.
Works and materials by the same artists are listed according to the date of the work in principle.
Works whose dates are unidentified are listed at the end of each item. Some works are not listed according to the date of work due to their relations.
The data of works and materials are listed in order of title, production year, material/technique/form, dimensions, donor’s name, copyright holder and credit for photograph.
Dimensions are given by height (H) x width (W) in centimeters for plane work, and height (H) x width (W) x depth (D) in cm for 3-D work. Diameter (Ø) is used for circular work.
For the name of country or city, the name currently used in English is listed in principle.