Les Loques de Chagrin – Patrick Van Caekenbergh

The Flemish artist Patrick Van Caekenbergh is an encyclopedist. He muses about man’s place in the world and works upon the idea that man is a domesticated animal trying relentlessly to order chaos. His art mixes precariousness and metamorphosis. It is for this reason that his works are mainly exercises of hybridization in which the becoming of an animal or the vegetable, are explored. Les Loques de Chagrin (The Tear Jerkers), (1990-2009) is the result of 23 years of collecting and assembling images of animals that illustrate the paradox of certain species’ survival instincts resulting in their own death and destruction. Van Caeckenbergh selects images of animals that typically have a predatory or contrary relationship and places them in a setting where their roles have been transformed into a symbiotic one. In one scene, the viewer can see a cat and bird drinking together from a bowl of milk and in another a group of pigs drinking from a cow’s utters. By altering the natural relationships, Van Caeckenbergh expresses a lesson in human morality and man’s need of tolerance of others.