Belgian artist Johan Muyle found his voice 40 years ago with La Modification (1984), an aptly named assemblage sculpture that borrows its title from Michel Butor’s celebrated 1957 novel. Consisting of a recliner attached to ropes and nooses, with a crate suspended between bicycle wheels placed behind, the entire ensemble evokes an instrument of torture or execution. This grim assisted readymade may echo Dadaist or Surrealist practice (and the spirit of Kienholz at his best), but Muyle’s intent runs deeper than provocation. His frequently motorized assemblages and cryptic performances create enigmatic and often unsettling allegories that burrow down into the state of the world and the contradictions of human nature. The range of themes, ideas, forms, and sensations that he has explored through his collection, assembly, and modification of objects is astounding. And yet, no matter how dark the subject, he adheres to his humanist faith and never loses his questioning spirit or his interest in people—their beliefs, rituals, images, and stories—producing work that simultaneously mirrors and transforms the real world.
Michaël Amy: Around 1984, while painting was still all the rage, you decided to focus on sculpture. Why?
Johan Muyle: At the outset of my career, I took on painting. Very rapidly, I was challenged by the limits of the support and the constraint of having to choose between figuration and abstraction. . .
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