Thierry De Cordier: Four Greeneries

“Es drängt sich alles zur Landschaft !”  (P. O. Runge)

Something is there, in abeyance… lying in wait for me. Like it or not. I can either stay and keep looking at these pictures, or I can leave. It doesn’t much matter. But if I decide to stay, to look at them at greater length—for example, because I’m feeling something possibly akin to the sublime—what might prompt me to leave, aware, nonetheless, that there’s nothing in this place that is exactly spell-binding? It’s quite possible to stay, of course, but to see what? And to realize what, in the end of the day? A form of painting that’s  overwhelmingly noiseless? Unconcerned? A form of painting which, in continuous silence and total indifference, is self-reliant…?

On the other hand, what can language express as you look at a painting that is silent? And how can this kind of painting be, quite simply, expressed? And is it really necessary to say something about it? Explain it? And if so, how and why is one to explain a painting that doesn’t call for any explanation?

To sum up, the four works on view here are neither interesting nor social, in the meaning currently adopted by journalists and critics today. No, they are intrinsically uninterested in the daily round, and its spectacle…

Thierry De Cordier