Overview
Marian Goodman Gallery is pleased to announce the first exhibition in our New York space of Belgian artist Thierry de Cordier. The exhibition will be on view from Friday March 3 rd through Saturday, April 8 th , 2006.
The exhibition will consist of a suite of drawings and works on paper which constitute Part One of a cycle entitled The Female Drawings . The artist plans to exhibit Part Two at Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris in the Spring of 2007.
Thierry De Cordier: The Female Drawings, Part I
March 3 - April 8, 2006
Opening Reception: Friday, March 3, 6-8 pm
Marian Goodman Gallery is pleased to announce the first exhibition in our New York space of Belgian artist Thierry de Cordier. The exhibition will be on view from Friday March 3 rd through Saturday, April 8 th , 2006.
The exhibition will consist of a suite of drawings and works on paper which constitute Part One of a cycle entitled The Female Drawings . The artist plans to exhibit Part Two at Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris in the Spring of 2007.
De Cordier presents the exhibition as a "particular search to find and define the feminine. Each drawing concerns womanly figures or forms or parts of the woman in all her diversity with this end in view: to gather various 'woman-images' into a single, unique and final picture or icon. To wit: a night-blue Trapezium." Drawing on a range of references, from the art historical to an entirely personal mythology that is the source of much of de Cordier's oeuvre, the cycle of works on view references, among other things "the rigid Icon of the Byzantine Madonna; going over the Western-Christian one, the Virgin, the Rose, the Saint Magdalena (in ecstacy); to the profane woman and parts of a woman (Matrix, VG, pussy, doll); [to] my mother (who takes a prominent place in the group); my sister; my wife; my imaginary daughter... and when one of her is not represented through image, she is represented or suggested in words. Gradually, little by little, each woman-image is flowing slowly and finally captured in the form of a trapezium: a geometrical non-place where all of the womanly fuse together."
-- Thierry de Cordier, January 2006.
Thierry de Cordier was born in 1954 in Renaix, Flanders, Belgium. He has lived in Schorisse, Belgium, and currently lives and works in the north of Auvergne, France. De Cordier studied painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Ghent from 1972-1976. Since the 1980's he has created a distinct and hermetic body of work in various media-- sculpture, painting and drawing-- as well as poetry and writing. 1991 saw the publication of De Cordier's Writings/ Ecrits (Vol 1): Les Petites Pensées d'un philosophe autodidacte/ (Writings or Small Thoughts of a Self-Taught Philosopher ), followed, in 1995, by the 2 nd Volume. In 1993 he received the Prize of the Plastic Arts of the Flemish State. In 1997 he was chosen to represent Belgium at the 47 th Venice Biennale.
Thierry de Cordier has been represented by Marian Goodman Gallery since 2002. An exhibition of his work, The Black Paintings, was shown at Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris in 2003. Forthcoming projects include an architectural project, The Chapel of the Nix (or Naught) , an empty chapel to be constructed on the campus of a psychiatric hospital near Antwerp in the Spring of 2006, and a commission for a public sculpture, titled Mad, to be constructed in the entrance hall of the new justice building in Ghent, Belgium in October 2006. Forthcoming publications include Contre-écritures, the 4 th Volume of the writings, to be published in the Autumn of 2006, as well as Lettres à ma mère , the 5 th Volume, to be published in the Spring of 2007.
Solo presentations of the drawings have included, most recently, Thierry de Cordier: Drawings , an exhibition centered on three main themes - Man/ House/ and Landscape -- shown at The Centre Pompidou, Paris in 2004. Earlier exhibitions of the drawings included one at SMAK / Museum of Contemporary Art, Ghent in 1999, and an extensive exhibition shown at the Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterloo, Netherlands in 1997.
Important group exhibitions include: "Outlook" , Athens (2003); "Set" , MACBA, Barcelona, and " Niemandsland " at Haus Lange and Haus Esters, Krefeld, Germany (1997); " La Pittura Fiamminga e Olandese da Van Gogh, Ensor, Magritte, Mondrian ai Contemporanei" , Palazzo Grassi, Venice (1996); "Call It Sleep", Witte de With, Rotterdam (1995); "The Sublime Void" , Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp (1993); "De Opening" , De Pont Foundation, Tillburg, Netherlands (1993); " Documenta IX", Kassel , (1992); "1951-1991: Image of an Era ", Palais de Beaux Arts Brussels (1991); "Inscapes", De Appel, Amsterdam (1991); " Espacio Mental", IVAM, Valencia (1991) " L'Art en Belgique, Flandre et Wallonie au XXe Siecle", Musee d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris (1991); "Weitersehen" , Museum Haus Lange und Haus Esters, Krefeld (1990); " Einleuchten", Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (1989); " Skulptur Projeckte Munster 1987", Westfalisches Landesmuseum, Munster, Germany (1987).
A monograph titled Fugues : Thierry de Cordier: Une Monographie Illustrée 1982-2002 was published by Ludion Press/ Ghent and Amsterdam in 2002.
