Immersive uptown gallery experience

Berlinde de Bruyckere, “Into One-Another To P.P.P.” Hauser and Wirth New York, March 1 – April 23, 2011.

On the subway up to 69th street I was treated to a wall of those super effective anti-obesity ads, the ones in which soda bottles and paper cups overflow with realistic torrents of greasy, gristly fat. De Bruyckere’s exhibition explores similarly visceral territory: semi-animate piles of truncated bodies are sculpted in polychrome wax or sketched in pencil, evoking Gericault’s cadaver studies and the filmic brutality of the show’s dedicatee, Pier Paolo Pasolini. But in this case an Old Masterly sense of craft cushions the abject body-horror conjured by the art—mercifully, I think. Influenced by the boutiques and fancy grocery stores in the neighborhood, these sculptures kept wanting to become charcuterie, or handbags.