The Universe Within

A bit gory, but absolutely amazing. The Universe Within exhibit. Couldn't take many pics since I had to be very very discreet...Sorry if this grosses you out.

[UPDATE]

Ugh. Not only is my site showing up when people google this exhibition - ew ew ew - but check this out. I am disgusted. Ugh.

Comments

[mademoiselle a.]

Is this the Gunter van Hagen stuff? I've only recently learned that his plastination HQ is only a few houses away from us. And this is a rather small town. :(
No big fan of his "art", as he calls it himself. Pathologically, very interesting. But the poses...there's a limit to everything.

[Mie]

Hi mademoisell a.

This exhibit was from China and all bodies were clearly Asian. Same plasination method though, so I'm not sure what the link it to Gunter. I too was quite uncomfortable. Who were these people and what happened? Did they volunteer their bodies in this way? And although peering into these bodies that were so exposed was truly an amazing experience, I didn't like their "playful" poses either...as if humor was to help us accept what we were seeing. And there is something hard to accept about seeing a cut off foot or limb all by itself. Our bodies are whole and seeing pieces was disturbing. Clearly, people should know what they are going to when they see this exhibit.

[mademoiselle a.]

Von Hagen, if I'm not too wrong, has a pantent on the plastination process. I know that he has a lab in China, where he has 'bulk orders' done by obvioulsy cheaper staff. Gross, I know. There was a scandal making the rounds here as to where the Asian 'donors' came from; some journalists claimed that whenever it said 'unclaimed bodies' it was in fact a delinquint executed by the Chinese government.
Von Hagen's exhibitions are called "Body Worlds" and "Body Worlds 2"; the management of the Chinese project is a bit confuse, so I would not be surprised if he has his shares in there as well.

[mademoiselle a.]

a toast on search engines. von hagen himself trained the organizer of the beijing exhib and is very critical about that project. he published a statement over at his own 'body worlds' website:

http://www.bodyworlds.com/en/pages/statement_beijing-tokyo.asp

...no existence of "copyright" in China, I'd say.

[cheesebikini]

...and I thought Damien Hirst's art was pushing it.

He does stuff like this:
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/hp/mastervision/hirst.jpg
http://www.whitecube.com/images/artists/dah/dah_lrg_006.jpg

Sean

[Mie]

Oh god. A lab in China for bulk orders?? Geezus. That doesn't sound good. I think this will be the sickest blog post I will ever have. I'm glad I saw it, and I'm glad I saw it without the knowledge above. It's hard enough as it is.