The work of William Ludwig Lutgens (°1991, Turnhout) has recently been going through a renaissance. The Bigger the Short, the Sweeter the Bottom is therefore the most multi-faceted presentation of his oeuvre to date. Thoughts on freedom and repression are central in this colourful, sometimes satirical exhibition.

Life-size dolls dressed as upper-middle-class office workers form a human wall. They are held in place by pillories or demonstrate peacefully on a slogan-spouting pick-up truck. The dolls alternately take their place in the space out of protest or shame.

Besides a series of new paintings, the installation Clinking Clunking is a real eye-catcher in the exhibition. This playful but absurd version of a musical chair dance was recently purchased by the Flemish Government for the SMAK collection.

Lutgens' oeuvre consists of paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations and publications that are tinged with humour and urge disruption. His work is fed by a continuous flow of information, in which he fuses facts with fictions and news items with uncensored thoughts, dreams and fantasies. In doing so, he exposes the grotesque, the obscene and the perverse within his culture and society, looking it directly in the face.