Sanguine/Bloedrood. Luc Tuymans on Baroque
Courtesy of the artist, Xavier Hufkens Gallery, Brussels, © SABAM Belgium 2018, image: (c) Dirk Pauwels
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