< Art Talks | Bouke De Vries— October 8, 2010—

Art Talks is an insight into the works of some of our favouriteartists, as seen by them

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Skull Face Mao, Bouke De Vries, 2010, 20th

century Chinese porcelain bust and 21st

century bisque skulls Courtesy of the artist

Bouke De Vries is an artist whosework deals in history andimperfection, employing a surrealistand oftentimes self-deprecatingaesthetic to deconstruct traditionalforms of sculpture, such as marblebusts, in order to make us reconsiderour notions of beauty. During Friezeweek, the artist shows in Vanitas:The Transcience of EarthlyPleasures, a group show curated byJoe La Placa and Mark Sanders thatexplores the temporality of existence.Here, the artist talks to AnOtherabout the piece he has in theexhibition, Skull Face Mao, andexplains why the one thing we needmore than ever in society is art... sictransit gloria mundi.

"I feel like the medium of sculpturechose me because my artwork grewfrom my work as a ceramicsconservator, except I deconstructrather then reconstruct, giving newlife to the discarded and the rejected.The Skull Face Mao in the Vanitasshow is inspired by the harrowing

biography of Mao Zedong by Jung Chang and John Holliday. He is the only 20th centurydictator who is still un-toppled despite being the one who was responsible for moremillions of deaths of his own people than all the others put together. My Mao series uses1960s Cultural Revolution cult-of-personality porcelain busts and statues. I madethousands of hand-made porcelain skulls to represent the nameless millions who diedbecause of his whims. Itʼs interesting to learn that at the height of the CulturalRevolution there were more busts and portraits of Mao then there were peoplein China. The skulls also remind us that we too will die. Alas poor us, alas poor them...vanity of vanities. Of course we all turn to dust in the end, but earthly pleasures kickagainst this inevitability. Art is one way in which we can outlive our own mortality, it liveson after us. Despite having been brought up a good Catholic boy, I canʼt say I stillʻbelieveʼ. I think different artists play different roles, some revel in the physical joy ofbeing, others wallow in the physical pain and mental anguish of being. These are theunderlying Yin and Yang of art, sometimes youʼve just got to laugh. My own work oftencomes out of me fully formed, perhaps because Iʼve been pondering these matters manyyears with no expression. Suddenly I found a way to express them, and there seems tobe an unstoppable flow. Humour is often a mask behind which lies the truth. Art helpsyou face the truth about the world, and about yourself... God knows we need it."

Text by John-Paul Pryor

John-Paul Pryor is Arts & Culture Editor at Dazed Digital and writes for Dazed &Confused, TANK, Another and The Quietus. His debut novel Spectacles will bepublished in 2011 by Seabrook Press

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