DAR AL HARB - FRANCE: TATTOOED PIGS, TIED UP WOMEN & BIN LADEN IN PARIS GALLERIES

Tied-Up Women, Tattooed Pigs, Bin Laden Inhabit Paris Galleries
By Jorg von Uthmann

April 6 (Bloomberg) -- Nobuyoshi Araki, probably Japan's most famous photographer, likes to portray women in peculiar positions that often involve bondage.

The Galerie Kamel Mennour on Rue Mazarine, has given Araki, 67, carte blanche to present samples of his work, which has been published in countless books. He has come up with almost 1,000 color slides and 40 polaroids, covering many different themes, including flowers, landscapes and cats.

The leitmotif, though, is the bound woman in an unusual posture, photographed with the cool precision of a lepidopterist. ``I want to tie up reality,'' Araki says in an information leaflet. ``Because I can't tie up the soul.''

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Wim Delvoye is Belgian and has been living in China, where he has established an ``art farm'' outside Beijing. It's a real farm with real pigs -- the only difference being that they are fattened not to be slaughtered but to be tattooed.

At the Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin on Rue de Turenne you find ``Pig Brother,'' a video about the farm, and several stuffed animals that underwent the cosmetic procedure (under mild sedatives) before their demise. Delvoye, 42, draws his inspiration for the tattoos from the logos of luxury goods, Disney characters and the body art of Russian convicts.

His most recent work is entirely different -- a model of a gothic cathedral, made of steel. If you look carefully, you will discover that the 12 windows are X-rays of love-making couples and other intimate scenes.

``What interests me is the theological aspect,'' Delvoye tells Le Journal des Arts magazine. ``God enters the church in the form of light, as the X-rays enter our body and reveal everything.''

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