M HKA Ensembles

° 1977

Born in Brasschaat (BE).

As a visual artist, Tinka Pittoors (°1977) views her surroundings – nature, the world around her, and by extension all of humanity –as her artistic habitat, a limitless soure of inspiration.

Despite the contradictions between the inner world and outward appearance, between order and chaos, power and impotence, her methods are unmistakably organic, rooted in a cosmic connectedness between form, matter and content. From time to time this connectivity even mutates, becomes coalescent, like roots which intertwine, entangled and nearly indistinguishable from one another, or atoms that bond, cluster together and form new molecules.

Her oeuvre is as colourful as it is peculiar, which can make it more difficult to grasp. A painstakingly constructed structural design lurks behind the seeming simplicity of her sculptures and installations, which are based on the utopia of the makeable world. The impression conveyed here is that the artist has resolved to craft a parallel universe from every imaginable object and living thing found in day-to-day life; all, however, have been transformed into something entirely new. Power, dominance and the law of the strongest are cast aside, if just for a moment. The artist throws her lot in with an imaginary and colourful fellowship which can best be summed up as “to be entirely frank, pleasantly deranged”. While recognisable materials appear to try and meld with reality, the form itself creates a sense of disorientation and vice versa.

Not stopping to ask whether her universe could be lived in, much less habitable, she continues to hammer away at her wayward Utopia, one overrun by a lust for life and daring. Whether she is on a quest for a better world is as yet unknown. All we can be sure of is that she is searching for another.