The Fantastic Sinking Boat by Julien Berthier

Love-love is a perpetually sinking boat created by French artist Julien Berthier. The boat appears to be sinking but never actually does, thanks to it’s clever design.

For this piece he adapted an abandoned 6.5 meter yacht so that it appears to be perpetually sinking. To create this, the vessel was split and a new keel was constructed allowing it to be sailed by Berthier at a 45 degree angle off the coast of Normandy. Love-Love, like much of his oeuvre, is impressive, poetic and humorous.

In this project, the artist invests his energies and resources into creating an art of fiasco, aiming in his words to “fix an object at the moment of its deregulation.” The image, and metaphor of the sinking ship is an iconic one – it signifies death, lost hope and sinking dreams. Berthier’s Love-Love freezes those sentiments permanently both celebrating and overturning them. On display in the gallery will be the boat itself as well as a series of accompanying photographs and documentary video showing the performance in Normandy.

The boat now belongs to some wealthy London Banker to whom he sold it for £50,000.