I’ve heard several visitors complain (some here on the blog) about the exhibition, Fresh! Contemporary Takes on Nature and Allegory. In it, the two pieces that seem to draw the most ire are Angelo Filomeno’s End of Presumption and Berlinde de Bruyckere’s Aanéén.

Bruyckere’s work intertwines two horse-like forms atop a pair of wooden saw horses. Although they appear to be real horses at first glance, these two forms, which are devoid of features like eyes, mouths and hooves, are sculptures covered in sewn horse hide and hair. The artist’s first sculptures of horses appeared in a Belgian museum commemorating World War I, and I can see that they might relate to the suffering and heartache of war. Curator Juli Cho Bailer writes, “One can speculate about the precise meanings of de Bruyckere’s tortured and deeply moving imagery, but the works themselves resist a fixed explication or narrative, instead remaining loyal to the universal themes—love and loss, life and death—inescapably fundamental to the human condition.”
What do you think?

Filomeno’s piece consists of two taxidermied peacocks suspended upside down from the ceiling vomiting glassy red blood. In the show’s accompanying catalog, the artist recalls how his mother “would kill chickens… then she’d hang the chicken from a chandelier to drip the blood. She didn’t have a choice. We didn’t have a yard, and if you put a chicken outside in the street, the dogs and cats, they would eat it.” Clearly the artist is presenting us with a strong contrast in this piece, the beauty of a peacock juxtaposed with the brutality of its situation.
What thoughts and emotions does this piece evoke for you?