Sympathy for the Devil

Sympathy for the Devil refers to the first track on the Rolling Stones album Beggars Banquet. Each of the selected art works in this book about contemporary artists are linked in one way or another to prominent ideas in the song: the fascinating beauty of evil, the attraction of moral or psychological hell, death and danger as a celebration of life, extreme and transgressive behavior and even a pronounced tendency towards sexuality. Curators Walter Vanhaerents and Pierre-Olivier Rollin have chosen the title Sympathy for the Devil for the second group exhibition in the Vanhaerents Art Collection, a unique collection of contemporary art based in Brussels. Includes the work of the following artists: Hamra Abbas; Mark Handforth; Mario Merz; David Adamo; He Sen; Jean-Luc Moerman; Christian Boltanski; He Wenjue; Yasumasa Morimura; James Lee Byars; Jenny Holzer; Farhad Moshiri; Wim Delvoye; Matthew Day Jackson; Bruce Nauman; Nick Ervinck; Barbara Kruger; Ugo Rondinone; Urs Fischer; Gabriel Kuri; Christoph Schmidberger; Barnaby Furnas; Terence Koh; Sudarshan Shetty; Anna Gaskell; Claude Leveque; Yinka Shonibare; Kendell Geers; Nathan Mabry; Johan Tahon; Anthony Gormley; Steve Mc Queen; Wang Du.

Pierre-Olivier Rollin is the curator and conservator of B.P.S. 22 in Charleroi, Belgium, a space for contemporary creation.

Walter Vanhaerents was an important building constructor, but is now one of the main art collectors of Belgium. He owns the Vanhaerents Art Collection and organizes exhibitions in his museum, an industrial building based in Brussels. His previous book, Disorder in the House was also published by Lannoo.