JOY SAUCE IN THE BELLY

You find yourself yawning, but that doesn’t mean you are able to sleep.

Like a  suspended state of exhaustion, almost fuelled by a sleep paralysis-like condition, Joy Sauce in the Belly unfolds as a sequence of caricatural characters emerging like hallucinatory projections.

A mass of figures perform in various forms throughout the exhibition, oscillating between parody and psychological breakdown. Instinctively exploring humankind through anecdotes that slowly slip into darker territories of pleasure and suffering, William Ludwig Lutgens choreographs and performs his works at the same time, becoming both protagonist and source for his ongoing preoccupations with burnout, co-dependency, power relations, attachment and emotional exhaustion. Props and caricatural apparitions wearing wigs reveal their flesh like zombified carnations – decomposing, almost slipping out of their own skin.

The image of the worker, the exploiter and the exploited collapse into one another, all leading toward systems of control, subjugation and alienation. Through theatrical gestures, grotesque humor and dramatic excess, Lutgens constructs a sad parody of contemporary existence, where characters drift through choreographed situations suspended between thriving and collapse, desire and disgust, performance and spiritual fatigue. 

The exhibition investigates a form of traumatic enjoyment rooted in repetition, pressure and the illusion that everything can be possessed, controlled or fulfilled. Beneath its satirical surface lies an existential wound: an incoherent mass that consumes, reshapes and recycles us while we continue performing through solitude, dependency and the fear of disintegration.

William Ludwig Lutgens (1991, Turnhout) works with painting, drawing, sculpture, performance, and film. In his multidisciplinary practice, he explores the human ego and the influence of media and societal systems within a performance-driven, late-neoliberal society. Playful, alter-ego-like characters often appear in his work, seemingly trapped within rigid social structures.The grotesque plays an important role in his work: a space where humor and horror, or attraction and repulsion, overlap. Through absurdity, satire, and estrangement, Lutgens offers social commentary on themes such as economic competition, artistic practice, labor, and authority, inviting audiences to reflect on the images, expectations, and structures that shape contemporary life. Lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium.