An Artist Captured Sex Acts As Strangely Beautiful X-Rays
Very, very NSFW. Really fascinating work you don't want to miss, though.
Wim Delvoye is a Belgian artist associated with the neo-conceptualism movement. He works primarily in a gothic style.
In 2001, Delvoye released a unique project in which he hired several people to perform sexual acts while being X-rayed.
Since its release, the project has been informally referred to as "Sex-Rays" by all English-speaking pun enthusiasts.
To complete the project, Delvoye enlisted the help of a radiologist and a medical X-ray clinic. The models are all friends of Delvoye.
Prior to taking the X-rays, Delvoye had his friends lightly paint themselves with barium, a contrast agent that helps body parts show up clearly in X-rays.
The X-rays vary in "explicit nature," but it's worth noting they focus much more on the male genitalia than the female anatomy.
After completing the photographs, Delvoye hung them in gothic window frames, essentially turning them into stained glass windows.
By showing only the more or less machine-like parts of humans in the X-rays, the artwork depicts lust in an extremely sterile way.
Delvoye made sure to give his subjects space, observing from a screen in another room.
According to Delvoye, the whole process was "very medical, very antiseptic." Delvoye essentially stripped romance and sexuality of everything that makes it human.
The images certainly give an unusual—and perhaps slightly unsettling—take on both in-the-flesh sexuality and pornography.
It's like watching skeletons making love, which is not all that different from watching fully-fleshed humans make love—except, of course, all the muscle, skin and organs are missing.
What do you think? Is this a brilliant artistic piece, a strange, perverse experiment or both?
To check out more of Delvoye's work, visit his website.