Event

M HKA, Antwerpen

13 March 2014 - 25 May 2014

In the exhibition The Pink Spy, artist Narcisse Tordoir (°1954, Mechelen) tells stories in an intuitive and associative way about the existential man in a 'disordered' world, by giving the lead role to 'the Oriental'.

The Pink Spy consisted of five different parts that functioned in juxtaposition with each other. Firstly, there were the new, monumental works by Tordoir himself, inspired by two sets of etchings by Venetian rococo painter Giambattista Tiepolo from the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, which were also presented in the second part of the exhibition.

In the third part of the exhibition, Tordoir opted for a quirky selection of works from the M HKA collection, focusing on the themes of 'man', 'world' and 'language', with work by, inter alia, Guy Mees, Bernd Lohaus and Ann Veronica Janssens.

In the fourth part, the artist presented paintings from the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah (United Arab Emirates). With this choice, Tordoir underlined work in which the urge became visible to adapt Western models to an authentic Arabic language of image.

For the final part, Tordoir selected a number of works by budding artists with whom he had joined forces at the National Academy in Amsterdam, where the confrontation between very different cultures is encouraged.

In Narcisse Tordoir - Pink Spy, the 'Oriental' had a linking role: he appeared on stage at Tiepolo, appeared in Tordoir's work, acted as the concept of identity in the work of several young artists, but was, above all, author of the works from the Barjeel collection. For Narcisse Tordoir, the ‘Oriental’ was, in his elusive shapes, a metaphor for the artist, philosopher, poet and scientist, people who, along with the migrant, were stigmatised in the political debate today.

Artists: Dia Al Azzawi, Saadi Al Kaabi, Issam Al Said, Walid Al Shami, Mounira Al Solh, Hicham Benohoud, Ahmed Cherkaoui, Vaast Colson, Cel Crabeels, Willem de Rooij, Niels Donckers, Hamid El Kanbouhi, Armen Eloyan, Mounir Fatmi, René Heyvaert, Ann-Veronica Janssens, Ragnar Kjartansson, Bernd Lohaus, Tala Madani, Aditya Mandayam, Guy Mees, Andrei Monastyrski, Hermann Pitz, Ayman Ramadan, Marwan Rechmaoui, Ed Ruscha, Stéphanie Saadé, Walter Swennen, Giambattista Tiepolo, Narcisse Tordoir, Narcisse Tordoir in collaboration with Carla Arocha, Alioune Bâ, James Beckett en Brehima Koné, David Tretiakoff, Alan Uglow, Richard Venlet, Didier Vermeiren and Reindeer Werk.