Sanguine / Bloedrood

During the cultural city festival Antwerp Baroque 2018. Rubens Inspires, the M HKA, the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, juxtaposes the spirit of the baroque masters with the vision of contemporary top artists. With the exhibition Sanguine/Bloedrood (Blood Red), curator Luc Tuymans aims to overwhelm the visitor by placing key works from the baroque of, among others, Francisco de Zurbarán and Caravaggio, in dialogue with works by classical contemporary masters, such as On Kawara and Edward Kienholz, as well as new works by contemporary stars such as Zhang Enli, Takashi Murakami, Michaël Borremans, Sigmar Polke and Tobias Rheberger.

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Sanguine/Bloedrood. Luc Tuymans on Baroque

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Courtesy of the artist, Xavier Hufkens Gallery, Brussels, © SABAM Belgium 2018, image: (c) Dirk Pauwels

MER GROSSE, 2011

Thierry De Cordier

Painting , 163 x 150,5 cm

oil paint on paper mounted on panel

In the exhibition Sanguine/Bloedrood, Thierry De Cordier is represented by an extraordinarily tempestuous work, Mer Grosse from 2011. The painted image consists for eighty percent of raging water, bordered at the top by a grey band of mist behind which a vague light seems to glow. It is the sea as we would rather not think of it: threatening and unfathomable. De Cordier paints this frontal view of nature with extreme precision in various shades of grey, accented with a few patches of swirling white foam. Mer Grosse is simultaneously overwhelming and ominous; it reveals the artist in his awful predicament, surrounded by a fatal sea.

Text: Hans Willemse
Translations: Michael Meert

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