Thinking Model II (2011)
BRAIN LEG IN WAX WITH WING OF A BIRD AND FABRIC
“I want to turn my body inside out to see what's inside it, or how it reacts and rules over my thinking,” Fabre notes in 1979 's Night Book. The playwright and visual artist has taken that thought almost literally in Thinking Model II . As in Thinking Model I , a white canvas provides a simultaneously clinical and theatrical backdrop. The wing of a crow lies seemingly carelessly over a “brain bone” emerging from the wall. The object, as so often with Fabre, is transformed into a symbol: the crow is sometimes associated with wisdom, but is mostly seen as a harbinger of death. Thus various elements of Fabre's oeuvre come together: the visual, theatrical and scientific approach, the complex relationship between body and brain, the similarity between man and animal, and the permanent presence and inevitability of death and destruction.