Joris Kuipers‘ installations are inspired by bodily cross-sections from MRI scans and CT scans:

“Joris Kuipers’ works find their origin in historic, scientific and/or anatomic sources ranging from the woodcuts by Andreas Vesalius to CT-scans, MRI-scans, autopsy images and the plastinations by Gunther von Hagens. As in medical practice, Joris dissects the body layer by layer. After this fragmentation, the body is rearranged in a non-rational manner, in order to reveal emotional significance.”

[via]

“By having a major figure from Chinese mythology appear on European shores, Huang Yong Ping examines, the notions of identity and cultural hybridity, as is often the case in his work. The environmental question is also very present in his art where he regularly exposes the paradox of the man sawing the branch he is sitting on, torn between creative abilities and destructive impulses. This is one of the many possible interpretations of this work: placed on the beach, the skeleton appears with the tide and, little by little, will be home to marine fauna and flora.”

Serpent d’Océan by Huang Yong Ping was created as a permanent work for the Estuaire contemporary art exhibition in 2012.

Sources: Nantes Tourisme, Laughing Squid, Flickr.
(All photographs shown in this post might be copyrighted by their respective owners)

Pietàs by Jan Fabre, 54th Venice Biennale 2011.

In the installation “What Will You Leave Behind?” by Nino Sarabutra, visitors are invited to walk on 100,000 miniature porcelain skulls…

[via laughingsquid]

Damien Hirst, Let’s Eat Outdoors Today, 1990 – 1991:

“The vitrine is split equally. One half contains a steel barbecue covered in raw meat; underneath the barbecue, trays of maggots are inserted where the coals should be. The hatched flies pass through a four inch circular hole, so that the vitrine is reminiscent of the face of a die, in the glass between the two halves. In the other half the abandoned remnants of a typical family’s outdoor meal is presented, a cow’s head lies beneath the table. An Insect-O-Cutor is positioned above the table, it’s tray removed so that the dead flies fall into the food. Hirst describes the work as an exploration into human attempts at “trying to isolate the horror from our lives and remove it.”

Jack and Dinos Chapman’s latest installation is, as always, shocking and stunning:

“It’s as pessimistic as we can make it but it’s pessimistic in a joyful sense. Fatalistic in a joyful sense. There’s nothing foreboding about this. It doesn’t serve any kind of moral end…We take McDonald’s as being a marker of the transformation from industrialisation to the end of the world. McDonald’s once represented the idealism of fast food and the space rest era. Now it’s consistent with the dilation of the ozone and a litigious clown who’s lost his sense of humour.’”

[via beautiful decay]