Mathieu Verhaeghe
Sausage Series, 2016-2020
In his work, Mathieu Verhaeghe (b. 1986, Antwerp) seeks to channel the tension between art, existential weight, and humour. He questions his position as an artist and the status of the art object in his conceptual oeuvre. His Sausage Series consists of a series of pig intestines stuffed with different types of paint. Verhaeghe approaches the individual works as paintings, although he deliberately seeks the boundary between painting, sculpture and everyday objects. On the one hand, the work can be interpreted as a product of conceptual and philosophical reflections; on the other, it reveals itself as the result of an artisanal process. The further drying and deformation of the ‘sausages’ is an inherent part of the work, which is never really finished.